System and method for developing and deploying computer applications over a network

Abstract

A stateful method of processing an XML markup document within a distributed computing system, includes the steps of: receiving the XML markup document by the CRE, parsing and holding the XML document's state by the CRE, receiving XML commands by the CRE, performing operations comprised in the XML commands upon the XML document by the CRE, and then updating the XML markup document's state by the CRE.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED CO-PENDING APPLICATIONS[0001]This application is a continuation of U.S. application Ser. No. 11 / 039,106 filed on Jan. 19, 2005 and entitled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DEVELOPING AND DEPLOYING COMPUTER APPLICATIONS OVER A NETWORK” which is commonly assigned and the contents of which are expressly incorporated herein by reference.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]The present invention relates to a system and a method for developing and deploying computer applications, and more particularly, to developing computer applications using a combination of a declarative markup language and a procedural code programming language and deploying them over a network.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0003]A typical computer application 80 includes a user interface (UI) 82, business logic components 84, and data 86, as shown in FIG. 1. Computer application 80 may be either a traditional client / server application, such as a Microsoft Windows-based application, that runs on a computer equip...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

This approach allows for flexible, cross-platform, and cross-device application deployment, reducing IT costs and improving user productivity by enabling real-time data and UI updates, while conserving bandwidth and server resources.

Problems solved by technology

This deployment mode is time consuming and lacks flexibility because the process of writing, compiling and deploying needs to be repeated every time there is a change in the source code.

Furthermore, a Windows-based application cannot run within a web browser.

However, the UI controls of an HTML-based application are not as rich as the UI controls of a Windows based application, therefore resulting in poor interactivity with the user.

Furthermore, web-based applications cannot run offline on a stand-alone client computer without a network connection to a server, have high bandwidth consumption and do not support bi-directional communications.

As was mentioned above, this prior art system and method of writing, compiling and deploying computer applications in the next generation of Windows environment is not flexible because the compiled bytecode of the combined business logic component and the markup document needs to be recompiled and reinstalled every time there is a change either in the business logic component or in the markup document.

The XAML documents cannot be modified or generated at runtime, which significantly limits programming flexibility.

Furthermore this type of computer applications can only run in the specific next generation Windows environment and are not compatible with other existing operating systems including the current version of Windows™ 95 / 98 / 2000 / ME / XP, Linux, Unix™, Macintosh™ or Palm™ operating systems, among others.

The footprint of the compiled bytecode of the combined business logic component and the markup document can be very large (“fat client”), which in turn results in network bandwidth limitations and server or client machine storage limitations.

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