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01/02/2006: "Why am I here?"

What does AppSwing hope to get from this two year project? In other words what are the objectives of the KTP project?
To keep it nice and brief the main objective is "Design and develop a method to facilitate the mapping of controls and behaviour of existing legacy windows applications onto cross platform browser based equivalents." You may be thinking, as I first did when I read it, "well isn't that nice, but what does it actually mean?"


To help explain this I'll describe what AppSwing's technology does. It enables Microsoft Windows applications to be mobilised and run from any device that can access the internet and read HTML. The software creates a HTML equivalent of the Windows application and allows a user to control the application from the web page. The software that does this is called AppServer.
So "mapping of controls and behaviour of existing legacy windows applications onto cross platform browser based equivalents." means work out what controls are in the windows application and convert them to a HTML equivalent which can then be used to represent the original control. So a button in the windows application would be recognised as a button and then have a HTML button associated with it.

This task is all well and good but a bit vague so it has been broken down into bite sized chunks to help give me an idea of what I will be doing for the two years:
"1. Conduct technical research into the workings of AppSwing’s existing technology and the market within which AppSwing operates.
2. Analyse the configuration process to understand what the technology is currently capable of, including its strengths and weaknesses. Benchmark how well the technology handles existing applications.
3. Based on the knowledge gained extend the technology to include support for additional Microsoft controls and then to support a new development environment.
4. Propose and present a method for improvement of the automated configuration process based upon knowledge gained.
5. Implement agreed improvement into the core technology.
6. Take software tool to market to prove the product through sales and train staff in relevant technology."

The first one was addressed using a wiki and I have discussed this in a previous entry. The others I will come to in due course.

So in a nut shell that is what I have been doing and will continue doing for the next year. On paper it looks nice and simple, but looks can be deceiving.