Web Applications - Spaghetti Code for the 21st Century

The software industry is currently in the middle of a paradigm shift. Applications are increasingly written for the World Wide Web rather than for any specific type of an operating system, computer or device. Unfortunately, the technologies used for web application development today violate well-known software engineering principles. Furthermore,they have reintroduced problems that had already been eliminated years ago in the aftermath of the “spaghetti code wars” of the 1970s. In this paper, we investigate web application development from the viewpoint of established software engineering principles. We argue that current web technologies are inadequate in supporting many of these principles. However, we also argue that there is no fundamental reason for web applications to be any worse than conventional applications in any of these areas. Rather, the current inadequacies are just an accidental consequence of the poor conceptual and technological foundation of the web development technologies today. email addresses: [email protected] [email protected] © 2007 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. The SML Technical Report Series is published by Sun Microsystems Laboratories, of Sun Microsystems, Inc. Printed in U.S.A. Unlimited copying without fee is permitted provided that the copies are not made nor distributed for direct commercial advantage, and credit to the source is given. Otherwise, no part of this work covered by copyright hereon may be reproduced in any form or by any means graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or storage in an information retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. TRADEMARKS Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Java, and Solaris are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, exclusively licensed through X/Open Company, Ltd. For information regarding the SML Technical Report Series, contact Jeanie Treichel, Editor-in-Chief .All technical reports are available online on our website, http://research.sun.com/techrep/. Web Applications – Spaghetti Code for the 21 Century Tommi Mikkonen Antero Taivalsaari [email protected] [email protected] Sun Microsystems Laboratories P.O. Box 553 (TUT) FIN-33101 Tampere, Finland