www.mftech.org
Aims
  • Firewall transparency
    • Dawn should be useable from (nearly) any network. This means that you should be able to use Dawn even if you are away from your home-network. Because of the very high friewall restrictions of some networks, it is needed to use a port which is openend in (nearly) every network. Well, this reduces the number of available ports/protocols a handful of possibilities. E.g. HTTP, POP3, SMTP. Well, this choice again reduces itself to just on real alternative - HTTP.
    • firewall persitent
  • Network independence
    • for using the system a network-connection should not be needed. If the connection breaks the user only will be informed about the loss (maybe a small icon in the left corner of the editor). The user can work as usual on the diagram. If the connection is back, the system automatically merges changes and detects conflicts.
  • No change of existing code
    • I am trying to achieve to change no code an existing project. Dawn is just an extension. So there is no need to regenerate an existing editor.
      Just get the server (which should generically for all editors), generate the extension for your editor and use the system.
  • Web-Viewer
    • A Web-Viewer will be provided to reflect the changes of the diagram on a web-page. The "view" (actually HTML/JavaScript) will be generated when the client-extension is created. Then the web packages will be plugged into the server.
    • The main idea behind this is to allow users, which are away from home, to follow a graphical development (or any other uses of an graphical editor) on an mobile devics which does not support eclipse. For example the N810 or the interessting telephon from this company which is named after a fruit.
  • Interoperability
    • Dawn uses a text based exchange-protocol to transport the data. The resource information will also transported in it's native textual format, mostly xmi. This will allow other clients which understand xmi to build an own network adapter an to communication with the Dawn server. So different clients can work on the system.
  • Conflict Handling
    • Dawn will certainly provide methods to detect, solve and avoid conflicts
  • Locking
    • Locking mechanisms will allow the user to request an exclusively lock on a part of the diagram. Until the lock is released other user can not edit the locked elements but follow the changes.
  • Flexible Network Adapter
    • In the "Firewall transparency" section I explained that Dawn bases an HTTP to allow a mobile and flexible system. For all who have a natural antipathy to text-based protocol the network adapters will be a small (or a quantum) solace for you. The Dawn Server will provide more than on adapter (currently SOAP and RMI) to allow clients to use the preferred ones. It will also be possible to switch the adapter on the client-side during runtime. This means for example if a user is connected to using RMI but then moves to a network which blocks the specified port he/she can switch to another adapter. Or if some delevopers are keen on using REST instead of SOAP or XML-RPC they can simply write an own adapter an extend the system.
News

February 19, 2009
updated the Dawn screencasts section
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February 14, 2009
The mftech.org blog went online
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December 12, 2008
updated the aims section
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November 27, 2008
Well, today the side went online.
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