John Ponzo

On demand web-client technologies

This paper describes a comprehensive set of technologies that enables rich interaction paradigms for Web applications. These technologies improve the richness of user interfaces and the responsiveness of user interactions. Furthermore, they support disconnected or weakly connected modes of operation. The technologies can be used in conjunction with many Web browsers and client platforms, interacting with a J2EE™ server. The approach is based on projecting the server-side model-view-controller paradigm onto the client. This approach is firmly rooted in the Web paradigm and proposes a series of incremental extensions. Most of the described technologies have been adopted by IBM server (WebSphere®) and client products.

Before-Commit Client State Management Services for AJAX Applications

Heavily script-based browser applications change the manner in which users interact with Web browsers. Instead of downloading a succession of HTML pages, users download a single application and use that application for a long period of time. The application is not a set of HTML pages, but rather a single page that can possible modify its own presentation based on data exchanged with a server. In such an environment, it is necessary to provide some means for the client to manage its own state. We describe the initial results of our work in providing client-side state management services for these script-based applications. We focus on browser-based services that can help the user before any data is committed on the server. Our services include state checkpointing, property binding, operation logging, operational replay, ATOM/RSS data updates, and application-controlled persistence.

Enabling bring-your-own-device using mobile application instrumentation

Many enterprises are investigating Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) policies, which allow employees to use their personal devices in the workplace. This has led to mixed-use scenarios, where consumer and enterprise software are installed on the same device. In this paper, we describe the Secured Application Framework for Enterprise (SAFE), a comprehensive system for enabling BYOD that allows enterprise and consumer applications to coexist side-by-side on the device. Rather than partition the device by profiles, SAFE embeds enterprise functions in each enterprise application; this allows for a seamless user experience and minimal intrusiveness on the part of the enterprise. We describe the SAFE toolset that implements the embedding of the SAFE instrumentation layer, and then provide an overview of several enterprise features that can be configured using SAFE. Specifically, we describe modeling for analytics, testing and replay, anomaly detection, and cloud data services, all enterprise features that can transparently be added to mobile applications.

Integrating Web technologies in Eclipse

In this paper we describe an approach and an implementation for integrating Web technologies in Eclipse, a Java-and component-based platform. First, we support embedding of UI (user interface) artifacts that are developed using either widget or markup technologies. Second, we provide support for DOM (Document Object Model) programming. We implement this approach by bridging the relevant foundation technologies-COM (Component Object Model) and XPCOM (Cross Platform Component Object Model)--which allows us to embed the engines of the two major browsers, Internet Explorer and Mozilla®. We discuss several possible applications of this work, such as seamless access to online help systems and Web-based development of administrative tools.

Avara: a system to improve user experience in web and virtual world

3D virtual world software is becoming a popular medium for entertainment, social interaction and commerce. To the best of our knowledge, there is no system available to facilitate the bridging between Web applications and virtual world systems in the form of information sharing, data collection and control propagation. As a result, user experience in a Web interface is not sensitive to state changes of virtual world avatars or objects. Similarly, a virtual world environment does not provide Web context-rich user experience. We address this issue and propose a bridging and context sharing architecture between the Web and virtual world applications such that Web applications can control, monitor and collect information from artifacts in the virtual worlds, and vice versa. We also implemented this architecture using existing Web and virtual world technologies. Based on this implementation, we illustrate some novel applications and present a user study to illustrate the value of the system.

Runtime adaptive multi-factor authentication for mobile devices

The Runtime Adaptive Multi-factor authentication ENvironment (RAMEN) is a client and server-side framework that provides multi-factor authentication policy enforcement for mobile devices running iOS® and Android®. On the client side, RAMEN uses a security manager that can intercept network calls and forward them for secure authentication to a server-side proxy. The server-side proxy contains a dynamic policy engine that can be configured to choose between different authentication methods depending on the mobile context. RAMEN is an extensible framework that has interfaces to plug in different authentication methods. We describe the policy model and implementation of RAMEN. We show the value of RAMEN to developers through an implementation of location-aware security policies that can be set up to enforce security zones that relax or enhance security requirements for different applications.

Towards Enabling Next Generation Mobile Mashups

Evolution of Web browser functionality on mobile devices is the driving force for ‘mobile mashups’, where content rendered on a device is amalgamated from multiple Web sources. From richness perspective, such mashups can be enhanced to incorporate features that are unique to the mobile setting - (1) native Device features, such as location and calendar information, camera, Bluetooth, etc. available on a smart mobile platform, and (2) core Telecom network functionality, such as SMS and Third Party Call Control, exposed as services in a converged IP/Web network setup. Although various techniques exist for creating desktop-based mashups, these are insufficient to utilize a three-dimensional setting present in the mobile domain - comprising of the Web, native Device features and Telecom services. In this paper, we describe middleware support for this purpose, both on the server side dealing with processing and integration of content, as well as on the device side dealing with rendering, device integration, Web service invocation, and execution. Moreover, we characterize how various components in this middleware ensure portability and adaptation of mashups across different devices and Telecom protocols. Based on our approach, we provide an implementation of mashup framework on three popular mobile platforms - iPhone, Android and Nokia S60, and discuss it’s utility.