Aida/Web is an

object-oriented Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of " objects", which can contain data and code. The data is in the form of fields (often known as attributes or ''properties''), and the code is in the form of p ...

, open source Smalltalk

web application A web application (or web app) is application software that is accessed using a web browser. Web applications are delivered on the World Wide Web to users with an active network connection. History In earlier computing models like client-serv ...

server using the model-view-controller (MVC) architectural pattern.

History

Aida/Web was written in 1996. Its first commercial application was the Gas Billing System of the Slovenia national gas company in 1998. In 2000 Aida/Web was made

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Op ...

and its web server part was merged with Ken Treis's Hydrogen to form the basis of Swazoo an open-source, vendor-agnostic, Smalltalk web server. In 2003 BiArt/ISO Quality management system was built onto Aida's core document management functionally (which now forms the core of the Scribo CMS). In 2005 BiArt/BPM web-based Business Process Management framework for executing business processes according to standard BPMN was built using Aida/Web. In 2007 the Aida/Web community developed its own mailing list and web site, and in 2008 Scribo has been developed on top of it.

Community development

Aida/Web is an open source project with a community providing support and development, with tutorials available in English, French and Spanish.

Features

Aida/Web provides: * Integrated Ajax support * Ajax libraries for Prototype and Scriptaculous * A collection of web components to build web pages programmatically * MVC compliant separation of presentation from domain *

REST Rest or REST may refer to: Relief from activity * Sleep ** Bed rest * Kneeling * Lying (position) * Sitting * Squatting position Structural support * Structural support ** Rest (cue sports) ** Armrest ** Headrest ** Footrest Arts and enter ...

-like bookmarkable url links * Integrated session and security management * Multilingual support * Real-time statistics * Built-in

Joomla Joomla (), also spelled Joomla! (with an exclamation mark) and sometimes abbreviated as J!, is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) for publishing web content on websites. Web content applications include discussion forums, ...

templates * A built in Swazoo web server * HTML is generated programmatically

Architecture

First developed in 1996 by Janko Mivsek, Aida/Web was designed to integrate distinct object and web philosophies. Viewing the web as essentially a web of objects, Aida/Web declares that each object should have its own URI. This means that web pages can have meaningful, bookmarkable addresses, unlike some other approaches to web design. This idea anticipated a call one year later by

Alan Kay Alan Curtis Kay (born May 17, 1940) published by the Association for Computing Machinery 2012 is an American computer scientist best known for his pioneering work on object-oriented programming and windowing graphical user interface (GUI) d ...

at OOPSLA97 where he suggested every object should have its own URI. Aida/Web aims to simplifying the inherent complexity found within multiple interacting objects, and is designed to reduce the need for difficult and complicated

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaSc ...

programming. Since Smalltalk objects maintain their own state and respond to requests, Aida/Web uses the Smalltalk language with the aim of simplifying the building of web sites, providing dynamic content with persistent

state management State management refers to the management of the state of one or more user interface controls such as text fields, OK buttons, radio buttons, etc. in a graphical user interface. In this user interface programming technique, the state of one UI co ...

. The MVC paradigm is fundamental to Aida/Web because it provides distinction between the object model, the various presentations (views) of the objects and the control of their relationships. This provides clarity between the functional and presentational aspects of a web page and aims to overcome what its designers believe to be design and complexity issues otherwise created by use of HTML,

Active Server Pages Active Server Pages (ASP) is Microsoft's first server-side scripting language and engine for dynamic web pages. It was first released in December 1996, before being superseded in January 2002 by ASP.NET. History Initially released as an a ...

(ASP) and

JavaServer Pages Jakarta Server Pages (JSP; formerly JavaServer Pages) is a collection of technologies that helps software developers create dynamically generated web pages based on HTML, XML, SOAP, or other document types. Released in 1999 by Sun Microsystems, J ...

(JSP). This Model-View-Controller principle has been used in Smalltalk since the 1970s and has recently been rediscovered in Java Struts.

References

External links

*
Aida/Web Architecture
{{DEFAULTSORT:Aida Web Web frameworks Free software application servers Smalltalk programming language family Software using the MIT license