XBS Application Development Platform

Transcription

1 Introduction to XBS Application Development Platform By: Liu, Xiao Kang (Ken) Xiaokang Liu Page 1/10 Oct 2011

2 Overview The XBS is an application development platform. It provides both application development framework and application execution platform. XBS applications, developed with XBS development framework, are modularized. They consist a set of loosely coupled modules. The modules can be individually developed, configured, scheduled and executed. That makes it ideally to be executed by XBS execution platform. XBS execution platform is a GRID virtual computing environment, running on top of a heterogeneous and geographically dispersed computer farm. XBS platform can also act as middleware. It can connect to other GRID infrastructures, to get more computing resources from the Cloud, to support computing or resource-intensive applications. XBS application can also be configured to run mixed with some modules in an on-premises XBS environment and some in the Cloud. XBS runtime is a highly configurable and intelligent platform. It provides most demanding services for applications: scalability, load balancing, resource balancing, QoS, fail-over, licence management, user access control (or roles) management, SOA infrastructure, runtime optimization, etc. XBS also provides across-server transaction framework for mission critical applications. That could significantly cut the cost and effort for application s development and ownership, and make application execution highly optimized, in a flexible, safe, secure environment, with minimum hardware investment. XBS platform supports diverse application types: desktop application, web/mobile application, web services, and schedulable background (non-ui) tasks/jobs. One XBS cluster can run multiple applications concurrently. That makes easier to add more functionalities to application, for example, add a background job ( e.g. to clean up logs) for a web application. XBS provides a centric role-based administration console for XBS execution environment, to deploy, configure, schedule, monitor the execution of applications, etc. XBS is a Cloud ready platform. It can be used for SaaS and PaaS (Platform as a Service). XBS provides an visualized IDE for application development. The IDE provides a visualized editor for application architects, to define application processes (i.e. XBS modules) and 'draw' links between them; The graphical presentation makes it intuitive for application development, application process review and maintenance. It also lets nonprogrammer project stakeholders to be involved. Meanwhile, XBS IDE keeps native programming environment and tools for developers, to code modules and its nodes with various programming languages. There is no learning curve for developers to use the IDE. Comparing with other workflow technologies, XBS workflow is both architects-friendly and developer-friendly. Xiaokang Liu Page 2/10 Oct 2011

3 XBS Module' nodes can be coded with different programming languages, e.g. C/C++, C#, Java, etc. and various DHTML/JavaScript framework for UI. That eliminates coding for interoperate between different programming language components, e.g. C++ calls C#, Java calls C++, etc. Therefore, no more Web Service, DCOM, JNI, RPC, CORBA, Remoting etc. needed. Developers could focus on application logic and do not worry to use what technology to realize it. It also makes it easier to connect to legacy application/system which may have different programming language API. Project can choose a most suitable programming language(s), according skill set, available APIs, runtime performance, etc. In addition, presentation and logic code can be separated. UI designer can work parallel with other coders. XBS platform provides a test framework, to facility unit test and integration test during application development process. That helps tester to make sure a test is complete and go through all the application process path. Xiaokang Liu Page 3/10 Oct 2011

4 XBS Platform Diagram Xiaokang Liu Page 4/10 Oct 2011

5 Software Stack Xiaokang Liu Page 5/10 Oct 2011

6 Architecture Benefits XBS platform brings significant benefits to every stage of application development cycle: Run time XBS application modules are loosely coupled in XBS execution environment. Each module can deployed individually to specified XBS server, and XBS execution environment links them together as a whole. XBS Engine provides not only a powerful GRID virtual computing environment to XBS applications, but also most demanding functionalities to enterprise and mission critical applications: scalability, load balancing, failed-over, cross-server transaction and SOA infrastructure. XBS application is: Highly scalable. XBS Application can be initially developed as single server application. Due to its composite nature, it can be deployed on multi-server environment, with litter effort. Modules are able to be deployed as multiple instances on multiple XBS servers. XBS provides load balancing among those instances. Highly configurable. XBS application can be configured at module level, at deployment time. Each module can be configured to fit the running environment: -- Configure module with localized data, e.g. file path (avoid UNC path), etc. -- Each module can be scheduled to run in specified period of time on certain machine. e.g. yield CPU time to other modules. -- By setting the maximum number of instances of certain modules can be run, application can maximum share of third party software licences, or optimize access of certain resources. -- Developer can set memory usage for modules. and XBS runtime will reserve a appreciated size of memory for the modules. -- Application can be gracefully shut down, partially or entirely. Highly adaptable to various hardware environment. For instances, -- to optimized the usage of computing resources, put CPU hog modules on a powerful & expensive machine, and the others on less expansive servers; -- run CPU-intensive modules on standalone machine, to avoid it hold CPU and slow down other process's responsive. -- database IO extensive modules can be deployed on the database server; other resource extensive module to be near with the resources. Due to the flexibility, application developers can focus on business logic and no need code specially for various deployment environment. Transaction enabled. It is a key feature for mission critical applications. XBS provides a transaction framework to make application processes transactional. Transaction can be across modules and servers. Xiaokang Liu Page 6/10 Oct 2011

7 Highly available. Each module can be deployed as multiple instances across multiple servers. That facilities load balancing and failed-over at same time. XBS uses these multiple instances to do load balancing at non-failure condition. Once a server having instance of the module shuts down (due to hardware failure or planned hardware maintenance), other instances are still available. Highly customizable. Client can re-implement some of modules and leave the application process as a whole intact. XBS Modules are encapsulated. Module implementation has less chance to interfere other parts of application. One XBS application can be used as a template or a profile for certain domain or industry. To concrete an application from a profile, just re-implement or extend some of its modules. Highly extendible. XBS application can load and execute dynamic XBS modules on fly. Highly optimized. XBS runtime can be configured to collect statistics data for each module's execution frequency and time. That information is very useful for IT administrator to pin point bottle-neck and find solution to optimize system. Minimum memory footprint. Instead of loading whole application into memory, XBS memory usage is in load-on-demand fashion. Each module is loaded when it's needed, and removed from memory when not need and other module need more memory. XBS Engine provides various access methods: Web/Mobile server for web/mobile client Web Services to expose application functionalities to third-party applications. Background tasks: to be scheduled to accomplish some non-ui tasks, like data backup or clean up. One XBS deployment can have a group of related applications, web applications, web services and background tasks. Adding applications is done by adding new modules or just simply re-configure existing modules. Multiple applications can be created to connect to one same module, with different configurations. XBS server itself is a XBS application, developed with XBS framework. Therefore, XBS server has all the advantages of a XBS application. XBS server is extendable, customizable and flexible. Central administration XBS provides an administration console (again, itself is a XBS Web application), to manage XBS execution environment at center point. It provides all the administrative Xiaokang Liu Page 7/10 Oct 2011

8 functionalities: deployment, software update, configuration, schedule, monitor, logging, etc. Design time XBS IDE is specific designed to be: first, developer friendly; second, make XBS application suitable for GRID computing environment. XBS IDE provides a visualized editor, to be used to define modules and draw links between them. That brings significant benefits to application development and maintenance: Application prototyping can be done in a much shorter time and more precisely. Prototyping becomes part of application implementation, instead of just a paper work. That saves development time, and meanwhile, eliminates the errors that may occur in the process translation from paper work to real implementation. After prototyping, application modules could be assigned to programmers to implement, according to various factors: developer skills (e.g. UI designer, coder, programming skills, etc), priorities of functionalities, etc. Monitoring development progress becomes more accurate, according to each module's status. That eases project management. Because application processes are presented graphically, it's easier for application review, by not only developers but also other decision makers, who might not know coding but do care of business process. It also gives new comers a clear picture of application and makes them catch up quicker, and become safer for them to do some changes. The whole application processes can be printed and reviewed offline. It's easier for application maintenance. To change application logic, some times, just a couple of mouse drag & drop on connections of modules. And meanwhile, Modules are self-contained and encapsulated. It makes safer to delete a module. Saving QA time. Application documentation always up-to-date. Modules can be packaged into library and be shared between projects as a building block, at design and run time. XBS can used to realize various kinds of software design patterns, e.g. MVC, Composite, Facade, Adapter, etc. XBS provides a Unit Test framework, to ease and facility XBS application test process. That can be used to test each module/node; or force a test to go through all the application code paths. XBS Designer provides IDE for modules coding. An XBS application can be mixed written with various modern programming languages: C/C++, C#, Java, etc. Development team has flexibility to choose programming languages for a certain module, according to available programming skills, APIs either from third part, legacy system or platform, etc. That makes easier to migrate legacy application to XBS framework. Most Xiaokang Liu Page 8/10 Oct 2011

9 of time, create a module using same language as legacy application uses, then 'copy & past' the code and done. Because XBS allows multiple programming languages mixed, it eliminates requirement of RPC, JNI, etc. That also reduces the number of sub-projects. Managing lots of subprojects is nightmare when project grows. UI and code can be separated into different module's nodes. UI designer and programmer can work parallel. In addition, web pages are no more a plain list of files. It s nightmare while project grows; instead, XBS Designer linked them logically and presents them graphically. That makes it easier to make any changes: delete, add and re-link. Each developer can use dummy implemented nodes, for unit testing, and no need to wait for other nodes to be ready. Xiaokang Liu Page 9/10 Oct 2011

10 XBS application development Typically, XBS application development process is from top to details (or large to small). Like UML, XBS application is typically split into two parts: model and process. -- Application model is the static structure of the system, e.g. 'Classes' and its relationships in OO programming term. -- Process part is how the classes works together to achieve business processes, similar with UML behavioural diagrams. But instead, XBS uses its propriety modular/flowchart designer. Comparing with UML and BPMN technology, 1. XBS is programmer oriented. Programmers code each module and its nodes. Programmers has closer control of how the application behaves. XBS links those modules together, instead of generating codes from diagram. That avoid learning curve of UML tools and bugs. 2. Meanwhile, it still keep the advantages by having diagrams: intuitive to all the project stakeholders, event non-programmers; easy for maintenance (add, delete and change) and review, etc. 3. XBS provides applications an advanced runtime environment and tools, having full set of demanded features. Basically, UML is about what the application is. XBS is about how an application is programmed ( or implemented) and executed in a computer environment. Conclusion XBS is an advanced application development framework and execution platform. It's used to develop loosely coupled composite application. It also provides a state-of-the-art distributed computing platform for application execution. XBS is aimed to provide an allin-one, one-fit-all solution for application architects, developers and end user, to make application development & execution process easier, quicker, flexible, durable and lower cost. Contact: Liu, Xiaokang (Ken) Montreal, Canada liu_xiao_kang@hotmail.com Xiaokang Liu Page 10/10 Oct 2011