The Hindu Business Line : Check if `struts' are in place

When raising physical structures, construction engineers use struts to provide support for each floor of a building. Likewise, software engineers use struts to support each layer of a business application.

SOMEBODY wanted to name the invisible underpinnings of Web applications. The analogy that struck him or her was supports for houses, buildings, and so the name got stuck: Struts. "When raising physical structures, construction engineers use struts to provide support for each floor of a building. Likewise, software engineers use Struts to support each layer of a business application." This friendly explanation is found in the intro to Struts in Action by Ted Husted and his team. A publication of Dreamtech Press (www.wileydreamtech.com) , the book has inputs for beginners to professionals, and covers all aspects of Struts framework, demonstrating key Struts features with Artimus (Greek goddess of hunt) and illustrating through case studies. How much does it cost? It's free, Struts, I mean, because it's open source that you can look up in www.apache.org. "Struts relies on standard technologies - such as JavaBeans, Java servlets, and JavaServer Pages (JSP) - that most developers already know how to use."

Now, what is a framework? It is a reusable, semi-complete application that can be specialised to produce custom applications, explain the authors, citing Johnson. One good reason why developers use frameworks like Struts is "to hide the nasty details behind acronyms like HTTP, CGI, and JSP." So, the book assures, you don't need to be an alphabet soup guru, but a working knowledge of these base technologies can help you devise creative solutions to tricky problems.

All of a sudden, the intro whirs to show "Struts from 30,000 feet" to give the big picture. That it uses a Model 2 architecture, ActionServlet controls the navigational flow, Struts Action does not render the response itself but forwards the request on to another resource, and so on. And you wonder when rubber would meet the road. So, the authors launch the first Struts application straightaway: "A simple user registration application." The recipe requires: An ActionForm, an Action, struts-config.xml file and three pages. "That's it!" And the Greek goddess Artimus is a Web-based news poster that can also publish its articles as RSS (not the Sangh, but Rich Site Summary). Good fun.

Lingo of models

UNIFIED Modelling Language is not the irritating commentary or blaring music that plays when catwalks are on, but is "an evolutionary general-purpose, tool-supported, and industry-standardised modelling language for specifying, visualising, constructing, and documenting the artefacts of a system-intensive process." That is a mouthful of definition you would find on the back cover of Guide to Applying the UML by Sinan Si Alhir, a Springer book from Eswar Press (www.eswarbooks.com) . Chapter 1 explains that UML's scope "encompasses fusing the concepts of three of the most prominent methodologies - Grady Booch's '93 method, James Rumbaugh's Object Modelling Technique (OMT), and Ivar Jacobson's Object-Oriented Software Engineering (OOSE) method."

That must be a complicated blend of all coding stuff, you fear, but UML isn't frightening, because it is a modelling language. So, a UML Sentence would have no indented lines but a stick man (the actor), and boxes for container, node and component, plus arrows. Something that resembles cave art. "The UML sentence unites the various model views via their elements... Traceability between model elements enables us to manage change and the resulting complexity due to change."

A few interesting terms: What is a swimlane? "A region of responsibility for action and subactivity states, but not call states." And submachine? Not a fast gun, but a normal state with an `include' declaration within its internal transitions compartment that invokes a state machine defined elsewhere. There is also the lifeline - not only on your palm but also in UML. It represents the existence of an element over time. You read on to stay in the race, lest you become an artefact, but know this much that an artifact is depicted as a stereotyped classifier. Okay, some basic doubt. What is a model? "A description of a system and context from a specific viewpoint and at a specific level of abstraction." And, abstraction or abstracting involves formulating metaconcepts from a set of non-metaconcepts. Manifestation involves exemplifying or instantiating non-metaconcepts from metaconepts. Instantiation has three variant forms, including classifying, stereotyping, and extending. A book for the meta guys and gals. Are you one such?

Know-how, show-how

AS we slog at call centres and data entry stations, we hitch our sights to the star that promises a better tomorrow when we would be ascending the value chain and doing higher techie things. To help such effort, there would be a transfer of technology, which makes Rajiv Jain's Guide on Foreign Collaboration: Transfer of Technology a relevant read. Published by India Investment Publication (www.vidhiindia.com) , the book discusses the concept of technology, tech transfer, licensing, franchise, know-how, patent, trade mark, and so on. What is high-technology, and what is low, is not something uniform across countries. So, a precise definition is hazardous, observes the author. That also explains why courts have difficulty when dealing with cases that hinge on tech issues. Licensing is one of the ways of technology transfer. "Licensing is the genus and franchising is a species," writes Jain. "In a licensing agreement, the licensor plays a less dominant role. He is happy as long as royalty flows in as per the agreement. He does not breathe down the neck of the licensee, so to speak, which is often the case in a franchising arrangement." So, if you are tying up with a hardware or software manufacturer from abroad, think of the pros and cons of licensing versus franchising. Remember however "licensing arrangement of a patent has to be registered with the Controller of Patents to prevent abuse." What about patenting know-how? No, you can't, says Jain; so know-how does not yet enjoy any special legal protection, national or international. "Know-how should pass three tests: It should have industrial utility; its secrecy should confer some competitive advantage on the licensee; and it should be proprietary technical information." While know-how can be reduced to data, drawings and graphs, there is also an intangible part of a composite knowledge, called `show-how'. This justifies the use of non-disclosure clauses in software development teams. Now a tricky problem: Who owns inventions made by employees? It is not unusual that your staff strikes upon a smart algorithm or work around a programming bottleneck innovatively. "Whether the invention made by the employee should belong to the employer depends upon the contractual relationship express or implied, between the employer and the employee," notes Jain. "In the absence of a special contract, the invention of a servant even though made in the employer's time, and with the employer's materials, and at the expense of the employer, does not become the property of the employer." As a saving, however, "inventions made by employees specifically employed for R&D may in general belong to the employer." So, read the terms of the contract once again, before laying claim to inventions.

Books2Byte@thehindu.co.in

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication

Stories in this Section
Storage drive

Still in the air

Hear the text ring

Ready for the swoop

Working behind the screen

Wouldn't hurt to offer help!

Tech on the Rampage

The lighter side

Quiz

Check if `struts' are in place

Cartoon