We consider WebWork as having three layers
Another simple rather general high-level interface is WebFlow under development at NPAC. WebFlow is particularly interesting because the same framework can support both computing and the software engineering process that produces the software for the computation. Thus, it illustrates the power of WebWork's linkage of computing and information processing. Dataflow is a very useful programming paradigm first popularized with AVS and Khoros aimed at visualization and image processing. However, it has since been successfully applied to general coarse grain software decompositions [23], [24], [25], [26]. We are building this functionality into WebWork using Java with an early prototype of the visual Computer-Web Editor shown in Figure 11. This editor allows one to place compute modules and link them together. Figure 12 illustrates an example of WebFlow application in the area of workflow management---a software project management. Here, we suppose each software developer runs a personal WebTools server implementing the hyperlink enabled CASE tools Hysource supplied with WebTools. These personal servers are connected (via the WWVM in WebWork) to agent and manager servers also shown in Figure 12. The agent (database configuration) server receives automatic notification from developer servers on each software volume update. The agent server uses customizable thresholds to decide when to send a report to the manager or a deadline reminder to a developer. Note that the underlying database is stored in distributed fashion on the collection of WebTool servers.
Figure 11: Early prototype of the Java-based WebFlow Compute-Web editor
allowing interactive placement and linking of software modules
Figure 12: The Java front-end for a software project manager tool under
development at NPAC. Developers, software configuration agents and
project manager modules are supported