Porting XForms applications to use XSLTForms

[Dan McCreary]

Hello all,

I just wanted to share some of our experiences with dynamically
generating XSLTForms clients on eXist.

First of all as far a load times, we seem to see that even large and
complex forms seem to load in 3-4 seconds the first time and in around
1-2 seconds after the files are in the browser cache.  We are doing
both client and server side transforms.  I can't speak to the specific
interactions between some of the admin pages and the configuration
that Thomas is running but I feel that this may be a bug and not an
overall architectural problem with either XForms standard or the
XSLTForms implementation of the XForms specification.

We have also done a great deal of work with Alain converting may of
our the older FireFox XForms applications to XSLTForms.  In general
all of the forms have ported without any significant problems but we
have attempted to document the differences in the XRX Wikibook here:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/XRX/XSLTForms_and_eXist

Our concern is that with the latest FireFox plugin not being available
on the Mac platform that we could no long depend on the Mozilla
organization to support the FireFox pluging.  XSLTForms is still in
Beta but has been improving quickly.  Alain has also been very
responsive to our concerns.

It is our hope that we can all work together to create high-quality
XForms administrative tools that make it easier for novice users to
manage the eXist system.  I think Wolfgang has done a great job
getting us started in this direction.  I hope others are willing to
also share their experiences integrating XForms clients into eXist
applications.  Let us know if you have any additional questions.

- Dan
--
Dan McCreary
Semantic Solutions Architect
syntactica.com

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[Kurt Cagle-2]

Wolfgang,

I'll second Dan's comments here, and also offer up my services on the XForms side for additional admin pages as needed - I've been working with XForms for about six years and Alain's code for the last year+, so can probably get things up and running pretty quickly if you can give me a precis of what specifically you need.

Kurt Cagle
Managing Editor
http://xmlToday.org

On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 10:19 AM, Dan McCreary <dan.mccreary@...> wrote:

Hello all,

I just wanted to share some of our experiences with dynamically
generating XSLTForms clients on eXist.

First of all as far a load times, we seem to see that even large and
complex forms seem to load in 3-4 seconds the first time and in around
1-2 seconds after the files are in the browser cache.  We are doing
both client and server side transforms.  I can't speak to the specific
interactions between some of the admin pages and the configuration
that Thomas is running but I feel that this may be a bug and not an
overall architectural problem with either XForms standard or the
XSLTForms implementation of the XForms specification.

We have also done a great deal of work with Alain converting may of
our the older FireFox XForms applications to XSLTForms.  In general
all of the forms have ported without any significant problems but we
have attempted to document the differences in the XRX Wikibook here:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/XRX/XSLTForms_and_eXist

Our concern is that with the latest FireFox plugin not being available
on the Mac platform that we could no long depend on the Mozilla
organization to support the FireFox pluging.  XSLTForms is still in
Beta but has been improving quickly.  Alain has also been very
responsive to our concerns.

It is our hope that we can all work together to create high-quality
XForms administrative tools that make it easier for novice users to
manage the eXist system.  I think Wolfgang has done a great job
getting us started in this direction.  I hope others are willing to
also share their experiences integrating XForms clients into eXist
applications.  Let us know if you have any additional questions.

- Dan
--
Dan McCreary
Semantic Solutions Architect
syntactica.com

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[Wolfgang Meier-2]

Kurt, Dan, Thomas,

thanks a lot for offering your help. I would actually like the admin
web app to become more of a real administration interface, eventually
even replacing the Java client. The biggest problem I currently see is
the collection and resource browser, which should be at the core of
the app. The current browser is quite unusable with larger collections
(the same applies to the list of backups). It should allow me to page
through the resources in a collection (or even search for them). The
collection view could be combined with a multi-file upload facility
similar to the one Kurt presented on xmltoday recently. We'll also
need a way to change permissions or mime types.

The general layout of the admin webapp does not need to remain as it
is. The sidebar menu is getting a bit crowded, so maybe we could
transform it into a GUI-style drop-down menu? Ideally the admin page
should be usable on devices with limited screen estate (so you can
trigger a backup from the phone ;-).

Well, I'm sure there will be more ideas.

Wolfgang

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[Loren Cahlander]

Now that we are talking about the redesign of the admin website, we should probably create a new discussion in exist-development.


On Nov 10, 2009, at 03:42 PM, Wolfgang Meier wrote:

> Kurt, Dan, Thomas,
>
> thanks a lot for offering your help. I would actually like the admin
> web app to become more of a real administration interface, eventually
> even replacing the Java client. The biggest problem I currently see is
> the collection and resource browser, which should be at the core of
> the app. The current browser is quite unusable with larger collections
> (the same applies to the list of backups). It should allow me to page
> through the resources in a collection (or even search for them). The
> collection view could be combined with a multi-file upload facility
> similar to the one Kurt presented on xmltoday recently. We'll also
> need a way to change permissions or mime types.
>
> The general layout of the admin webapp does not need to remain as it
> is. The sidebar menu is getting a bit crowded, so maybe we could
> transform it into a GUI-style drop-down menu? Ideally the admin page
> should be usable on devices with limited screen estate (so you can
> trigger a backup from the phone ;-).
>
> Well, I'm sure there will be more ideas.
>
> Wolfgang
>
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[Wolfgang Meier-2]

> Now that we are talking about the redesign of the admin website, we should probably create a new discussion in exist-development.

Thanks, Loren, you are right. We should definitely try to move more
discussions into the development list.

Wolfgang

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[Kurt Cagle-2]

On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 2:25 PM, Loren Cahlander <loren.cahlander@...> wrote:

Now that we are talking about the redesign of the admin website, we should probably create a new discussion in exist-development.

I'd concur. It would be a good idea to set up a wiki or similar interface (eXist based or not) that we could use to establish what features would need to be in a next-gen admin interface, and to help set up priorities for development.

Kurt

 

 

On Nov 10, 2009, at 03:42 PM, Wolfgang Meier wrote:

> Kurt, Dan, Thomas,
>
> thanks a lot for offering your help. I would actually like the admin
> web app to become more of a real administration interface, eventually
> even replacing the Java client. The biggest problem I currently see is
> the collection and resource browser, which should be at the core of
> the app. The current browser is quite unusable with larger collections
> (the same applies to the list of backups). It should allow me to page
> through the resources in a collection (or even search for them). The
> collection view could be combined with a multi-file upload facility
> similar to the one Kurt presented on xmltoday recently. We'll also
> need a way to change permissions or mime types.
>
> The general layout of the admin webapp does not need to remain as it
> is. The sidebar menu is getting a bit crowded, so maybe we could
> transform it into a GUI-style drop-down menu? Ideally the admin page
> should be usable on devices with limited screen estate (so you can
> trigger a backup from the phone ;-).
>
> Well, I'm sure there will be more ideas.
>
> Wolfgang
>

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> trial. Simplify your report design, integration and deployment - and focus on
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[Wolfgang Meier-2]

> I'd concur. It would be a good idea to set up a wiki or similar interface
> (eXist based or not) that we could use to establish what features would need
> to be in a next-gen admin interface, and to help set up priorities for
> development.

Sure, I can open a new section on atomic.exist-db.org and give us
write access tomorrow.

Wolfgang

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[claud108]

While improving the eXist's installer and due to the production requirements I was faced with, I had the intuition the webadmin UI should be like a "main control panel" of an eXist server.

Thus, I thought that this webadmin UI should:
1. contain a section allowing admin to activate/deactivate modules of eXist (this is closely related to my previous proposals regarding splitting conf.xml);
2. allow admin to restart server;
3. aggregate a general configuration file, which can be used to set a new development / production server by using a new version of eXist (in case of deploying a server with the same version, $EXIST_HOME/installer should be used);

I am sure that I haven't the efficiency of the above mentioned volunteers, but I could help a little even with XForms, as I propose to use XForms for UI.


Claudius Teodorescu

[thomas.0007]

Claudius,

I really like your idea and I share the same wishes about what the admin
panel should do.
I think we should open a new discussion about the features of this admin
control panel.

Thomas


"claud108" <claud108@...> wrote in message
news:26292961.post@......

>
> While improving the eXist's installer and due to the production
> requirements
> I was faced with, I had the intuition the webadmin UI should be like a
> "main
> control panel" of an eXist server.
>
> Thus, I thought that this webadmin UI should:
> 1. contain a section allowing admin to activate/deactivate modules of
> eXist
> (this is closely related to my previous proposals regarding splitting
> conf.xml);
> 2. allow admin to restart server;
> 3. aggregate a general configuration file, which can be used to set a new
> development / production server by using a new version of eXist (in case
> of
> deploying a server with the same version, $EXIST_HOME/installer should be
> used);
>
> I am sure that I haven't the efficiency of the above mentioned volunteers,
> but I could help a little even with XForms, as I propose to use XForms for
> UI.
>
>
> Claudius Teodorescu
> --
> View this message in context:
> http://old.nabble.com/Porting-XForms-applications-to-use-XSLTForms-tp26288681p26292961.html
> Sent from the exist-open mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
>
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> on
> what you do best, core application coding. Discover what's new with
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