The AppProjector^TM is a pre-fabricated front end for enterprise Web 2.0 applications. It significantly reduces the time and cost of developing web applications and provides a rich user interface to those applications.

Applications developed with the AppProjector^TM can run natively in Internet Explorer and most other browser without a plug-in.

The AppProjector^TM can be thought of as an alternative to Java Server Pages (JSPs) or Struts that enables fine-grained user interaction, while completely eliminating the need for client-side programming. Because the user interface and client-server communication is handled entirely by the AppProjector^TM, the application developer can be freed from the concern of client-side compatibility testing while benefiting from the richness and interactivity of a desktop-like web application.

Figure 1 shows the AppProjector^TM architecture. The AppProjector^TM consists of a client portion for displaying the user interface called the AppProjector Client and a server portion for running the business logic called the AppProjector Server. Both the AppProjector Client and AppProjector Server contain a communications layer called the Web Communicator to send messages back and forth via HTTP tunneling.

The AppProjector Client has a set of user interface controls, a rendering engine that interprets descriptions of the screens that are provided in XML by the application developer, and a client-side data buffer for caching data on the client. It also contains the client portion of the Web Communicator.

The entire client is downloaded to the end user’s browser automatically when the user browses to the web page that contains the application. The client is designed to support user interface controls rendered using the Asperon KWT, which is a highly compatible user interface component set that eliminates the need for a plug-in for Internet Explorer and most other browsers.

The AppProjector Server consists of the part of the Web Communicator that talks to the client, and the Web Activator. The Web Activator has a controller for handling user inputs, and an application model that serves as the interface to the application logic, and manages all of the user sessions as remote users log in to the server. Taken together, the AppProjector^TM components form a model-view-controller system with the application as the model, and the AppProjector^TM acting as the view and controller.

The AppProjector^TM client is completely generic, in that the same client is used for all applications. This makes it easy to deploy changes to the user interface without having to update the client. It also eliminates the need for application-specific browser testing.

The user interface is specified as a set of screens that are represented in XML, and read in by the Web Activator server. These screens are automatically delivered to the client through the Web Communicator communications layer at run time. The Web Communicator sends messages back and forth between the client and the server using a binary encrypted and compressed form XML. It uses HTTP tunneling with the browser’s proxy settings so that AppProjector^TM applications can be used through most corporate firewalls without reconfiguration.

See a detailed white paper about the AppProjector^TM design.