Exercise 7

1. Why is the perception getting stronger that integration will become a critical factor in coming days?

Nowadays, e-commerce will involve a lot of Business-to-Business (B2B) communications. Information (data) needs to transfer from one platform into another platform within trading partners. Those trading partners will have its own islands to handle their own e-commerce data, thus successful e-commerce model will involves how they can efficiently handling data exchange. Integration is the main direction in order to achieve a best e-commerce model. In an integrated environment, due to well-designed communication method (data format and protocol), the communication is more streamlined and therefore B2B visibility will be enhanced. Business decision will be made much faster to respond for the market need and it is a critical factor for a business to success in the coming days.


2. What is the relationship of AJAX to JQuery (jquery.com) and the lightweight Web 2.0 JavaScript framework called MooTools (mootools.net) within the enterprise software architecture?

In JQuery site (2010) states that "jQuery is a fast and concise JavaScript Library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web development. jQuery is designed to change the way that you write JavaScript."

In mootools.net (2010) states that "MooTools is a compact, modular, Object-Oriented JavaScript framework designed for the intermediate to advanced JavaScript developer."

It is very clear that they are both open-sourced JavaScript libraries which can improve the efficiency for developing the enterprise software (rapid development). They helped the WEB developer to implement flexible, powerful and multiple browser coding on the fly.

3. What are the similarities between the object-oriented development using model-view-controller (MVC) in Ruby on Rails 2.0 and Action Script 2.0 (Flash animations)?

Ruby on Rails 2.0 (RoR) and Action Script 2.0 (AS) both are object-oriented development tools using MVC model to achieve rapid WEB development. They are both class-based cross-platform (OS) tools to develop internet applications and websites relied on WEB servers. They are both language dependent tools which RoR is based on ruby and AS is mainly based on ECMAScript - similar to JavaScript.

4. What does it mean to develop RESTful practices into our web applications?

A Representational State Transfer (REST)ful practices means to make our web service (Client-Server) application communication with standardization. REST is related to the Service Oriented Architecture base on resources by putting some constraints into application architecture and has the following properties: scalability, performance, security, reliability, and extensibility. (Hao, 2004)