AITEC Contract Research Projects in FY1998:Intermediate Report

(7)WEB-KLIC software

Principal Investigator :Enrico Pontelli Assistant Professor
New Mexico State University,U.S.A.

Title of the Research Project, Principal Investigator

(1) Title of the Research Project

WEB - KLIC software

(2) Principal Investigator

Enrico Pontelli, Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science, New Mexico State University

Contents

(1) RESEARCH THEME:

Brushup activity for the WEB-KLIC project.

WEB-KLIC is a language developed as extension of KLIC aimed at supporting high-level development of applications for the World Wide Web.

(2) PURPOSE of the report:

The goal of this report is to assess the current status of the brushup activity funded in 1998 for the WEB-KLIC project.

(3) STATUS of the project:

The brushup activity started in late September 1998. The people involved in the activity are E. Pontelli (Principal Investigator), G. Gupta (Collaborating Investigator), and N. Datta (Research Assistant, PhD student). In spite of the delayed starting date of the project - due to the administrative delays in the setting up the accounts and processing the transfer of funds - the work is proceeding at a good pace. At present the following activities are in progress:

- Gopal Gupta is working on the revised version of the WEB-KLIC manual. The work is aimed at extending the existing documentation and adding two new sections (a tutorial and an Internals section).
- Nayana Datta is familiarizing with the existing implementation of WEB-KLIC and is developing the Netscape PlugIn which will allow Netscape to execute WEB-KLIC programs.
- Enrico Pontelli is designing the abstract API for CGI scripting using WEB-KLIC

(4) MAJOR results achieved:

  1. the existing WEB-KLIC manual has been revised and corrected. Part of the Tutorial component of the manual has been completed.
  2. a preliminary version of the Netscape PlugIn has been developed. For simplicity the PlugIn has been developed to execute Prolog programs and it is now being ported to WEB-KLIC.
  3. the preliminary API for CGI scripting has been designed.

(5) COMMENTS:

The Tutorial section of the manual which has been completed will lead the user of WEB-KLIC in understanding the features of the framework through a series of practical examples. Code of the example programs will be supplied with the final product. The Internals section of the manual, yet to be written, will illustrate the implementation of WEB-KLIC - and it will be aimed at developers interested in modifying or extending the framework.

The Netscape PlugIn will allow Netscape to download WEB-KLIC modules and execute them on the client-side - in a fashion similar to Java's Applets.

The CGI API will allow programmers to use WEB-KLIC for developing scripts to process data from HTML forms. The API has been designed (and it is currently under implementation) to allow mostly non-expert programmers to write scripts without knowledge of the CGI communication protocols.

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