The Internet is still evolving and future Web applications are likely to exhibit greater interactivity. Corporations are beginning to find value in providing customers with up-to-date and customized information on products and services. Approximately 2.5 million Web users have already made purchases through the Web. The technology to provide the needed interactivity is beginning to emerge. Most notably, the programming language Java allows users to automatically download platform-independent applications ("applets") to run on the user's computer.
The focus of this paper, however, is on server-side capabilities that provide the automatic generation of Web pages from existing databases, including graphical displays and rudimentary analysis tools. "WebObjects", by NeXT Software, Incorporated, is an example of a recently released commercial tool that appears promising for this type of application.
But what if you want to hook a Web page up to your databases today? This paper shows how the Data & Analysis Center for Software (DACS) created Web pages to provide software engineers access to software metrics data through the Web. Users around the globe can select data to analyze. Graphical and statistical summaries are created dynamically and presented to the user. This system exploits the usability of the Web to present results in a format a manager can use in planning or monitoring a software project.
This application uses a commercial database and public domain Internet tools, including a Sybase database, Structured Query Language (SQL), SybPerl, Gnuplot, Fudgit, and ImageMagick. These tools and others can be used for a wide variety of Web applications quite different from software metrics.
This Report is Available in its Entirety Through
The DACS Web Site At:
http://www.dacs.dtic.mil/techs/tr.shtml
