27-Oct-15 About This Course

2 CIT597 The formal title of this course is “Programming Languages & Techniques III” A better title would be “Web technologies” Some of these technologies are specific to Java Most of the technologies are language-independent This course, however, uses Java Prerequisite: CIT594 or equivalent proficiency in Java Translation: you had better already be a pretty good Java programmer!

3 “The network is the computer” The explosive growth of the Web has greatly changed the face of computing Before, we wrote programs under these assumptions: We could use whatever language was convenient We could write programs for the computer we happened to have available at the moment We could design our own data formats and database schema We did not have to interact with the rest of the world Today, all of these assumptions are wrong! Sun’s slogan, “The network is the computer,” is becoming true Platform independence is no longer a luxury, but a necessity There is a large and growing need for information interchange

4 Platform independence The Internet has become extremely popular It connects millions of computers together These computers run all kinds of programs, with all kinds of operating systems Interoperability of programs and data has become a serious issue There are two possible solutions: Microsoft’s preferred solution: Force everyone to use Windows Much of Microsoft’s software is designed with this end in mind If this happens, it will not happen quickly Develop platform-independent languages and systems This is what all the other software developers (including Sun Microsystems, the creator of Java) are working on

5 Java, HTML, XML, etc. Java is the most platform-independent language we have This is one of the reasons for its popularity (there are many others) HTML is not as feature-rich as MS Word, but it nevertheless does a pretty good job HTML is the language of the Web Most software documentation these days is distributed in HTML, PDF (Adobe’s Portable Document Format), or plain text We will look at ways to create HTML from Java XML is a platform-independent way of describing data We will look at ways to process XML from Java SQL is the most widely accepted database language We will look at ways to access SQL databases from Java Client-server architecture is used to communicate across the Web We will look at creating server-side and client-side applications

6 HTML Some technologies we may cover Java HTML Forms JavaScript XHTML & CSS But underneath... HTTP TCP/IP Sockets maybe RMI Java servlets JSP PerlPHP SQL XML DTD XML Schemas RELAX NG XSL XSLT XPath CSS Java SAX DOM JAXP Java JDBC Apache Tomcat Ajax Ruby Rails

7 Software Most of the necessary software will be installed in the Moore 207 lab I strongly encourage you to install the software on your own computer The basic software you need is: Java 6, Firefox 3, EasyEclipse for LAMP, XAMPP, Tomcat, and a decent text editor (such as jEdit or Notepad++) Other software will be recommended as needed The newest versions of all this software are freely available on the Web I avoid proprietary (Windows-only) software I can’t provide a lot of help with installation

8 Textbook The textbook is Programming the World Wide Web, 4th Edition, by Robert W. Sebesta This is, unfortunately, a fairly expensive book (about $90), but it fits this course very well Like my course, this book is broad but shallow--that is, it covers a great many topics, but none of them in any depth If you are seriously broke, the Web is full of great (and some not-so-great) tutorials and specifications I will provides some links to these, but... You should be able to find this kind of information for yourself!

9 Assignments We will have approximately one assignment per week Assignments will frequently build on previous assignments Assignments may say something like, “plus five features not covered in class” This is to make sure you explore the resources available to you Note: To make it practical to grade your assignments, it is your responsibility to point out these extra features Appearance and content will be factors in grading Late policy: 5% off for each day late Assignments will be due by midnight

10 Examinations We will have a short quiz each Wednesday Quizzes will concentrate on recently covered material, but may include earlier material if appropriate Quizzes may include material that was not covered in class Your lowest quiz grade will be dropped There will be no final exam Assignments and examinations will be weighted as follows: 50% assignments, 50% quizzes Grades will be curved: 90% (or any other number) is not necessarily an A

11 Extra credit I will not, in general, provide specific extra credit assignments Small amounts of extra credit will be given for helping to improve this class; for example: Finding new Web sites that I think are really useful (just finding relevant Web sites is easy; there are thousands) Pointing out serious problems in my assignments (early enough to help others!) I may allow significant extra credit for a project of your own devising, if you first get me to agree and then do a good job on it Extra credit will be used to adjust grades upward, after they have been calculated for the entire class

12 Rules You may: discuss the assignments with one another help others debug their work use, without attribution, anything I post to the Web You may not: share code with anyone but your assigned partner (if any) copy another’s code, or allow your code to be copied lend your code to someone else, or leave it lying around where someone else may copy it use any code from textbooks or the Web without my permission If you think you may have accidentally broken a rule, come and talk to me about it

13 The End “I know Karate, Kung Fu, and 47 other dangerous words.” --Source unknown