There are plenty of web scripting (and compiled) languages out there for designing enterprise web applications.
There have also been plenty of developments in WYSIWYG-style website development tools.

So... How about a visual programming language 'of sorts' for designing, developing & testing web applications?

Using an object orientated approach, this should make for quite an interesting system for many Web 2.0 business' and applications (rather than relying on more complex ruby on rails, PHP & .NET implementations). Think... of the functions as specific graphical modules, each connected to the next by a visual 'data pipeline'. Static Parameters for the function/module may be edited by clicking on the module and changing its preferences. Dynamic parameters may be input directly from other modules.

In effect you would be designing your application in a similar method to that seen in electrical circuit design. One other similar product would be Pipeline Pilot (by Scitegic) - a Scientific dataflow system that allows connection and sharing of multiple scientific applications (modelling, analysis, etc.)

In addition to the ease of design when developing in such a system (the entire project scope can be viewed visually whilst creating it), additional benefits could include:

- Visual debugging. Running the dataflow with a step at each function and input and output shown in windows.
- The tools for design and development could be also be web-based and stored on the same server allowing developmental access for any location
- Collaboration and version control could be streamlined, with the locking and unlocking of multiple modules. All project data could be stored in XML, with the individual modules being rendered/compiled prior to use in the published project. This would allow a set of tags to be created each time a new version was edited and rendered (along with corresponding rendered copies of each module)
- And oh so much more.

This idea would suit more of an open source project, contributed to by a number of Web 2.0 business' utilising the standard, together forming a consortium of sorts.

So... any ideas, opinions, criticisms, etc?

Posted: June 3, 2008, 6:14 am

Hey mate,

Do you mean something focused on visually aggregating miscellaneous online web services / APIs / screenscrapers as found on Yahoo pipes

OR

Something a little more developer focused, with a visual development environment for simplifying the prototyping of web UIs for mashups like Microsoft's Pop Fly?

OR

A little bit of both?

Posted: June 3, 2008, 7:54 am

Siddey, how's it all going?

I've looked at yahoo pipes before - It's more of a distributed platform but I guess if all of your standard functional libraries were implemented somewhere on the internet it would be getting close.

Popfly I haven't yet done much looking into. It does, however, appear to use Silverlight which is proprietary, and all functionality appears to be client-side.

I'm looking at more of an enterprise system that can be setup on your own server and used to design and develop your own web application (ala; Netbanking applications, mind mapping, etc...). Processing should be able to be set as either server or client side (depending upon requirements), with web standards used client side and either an existing open-source language (PHP for example) or a proprietary language used server side.

As with both Popfly & Yahoo Pipes, however, no programming should have to be done at all. However it should be possible to build your own independent enterprise web application with no reliances (stepping away from mashups here) on external sources.

Posted: June 3, 2008, 3:55 pm

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Salman Khan
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Posted: July 26, 2008, 12:12 pm