Maturity Model for Liquid Web Architectures
Andrea Gallidabino & Cesare Pautasso
http://www.pautasso.info
[email protected]
@pautasso
Abstract
Whenever a user connects with more that one single device, either sequentially or concurrently, to a liquid Web application, the application adapts to the set of connected devices and it is able to flow seamlessly between them following the user attention. As opposed to traditional centralised architectures, in which the data and logic of the application resides entirely on a Web server, Liquid software needs decentralised or distributed architectures in order to achieve seamless application mobility between clients. By decomposing Web application architectures into layers, following the Model View Controller design pattern, we define a maturity model for Web application architectures evolving from classical solid applications deployed on single devices, to fully liquid applications deployed across multiple Web-enabled devices. The maturity model defines different levels based on where the application layers are deployed and how they migrate or synchronize their state across multiple devices. The goal of the maturity model described in this paper is to understand, control and describe how Web applications following the liquid user experience paradigm are designed and also provide Web developers with a gradual adoption path to evolve existing Web applications.
1 Computer
Many Users
(1950-1970)
1 Computer
1 User
(1980-1990)
Many Computers
1 User
(2000-)
Apple Continuity
Samsung Flow
What about the Web?
Responsive
Liquid
Adapt
Liquid Metaphor
Flow
Liquid Software
- Adapt the distributed user interface to fully take advantage of the set of devices
- Seamlessly migrate and clone running applications across devices
Minority Report (2002)
How Liquid is the Web?
Web App Architecture
Logic
State
Channel
1
2
3
4
5
Maturity Model
Maturity Model for Liquid Web Applications
- The early Web was Liquid from the start.
All it took was a shared URL to migrate the state of a Web application. Real-time synchronization was however impossible. - As the Web got richer with more state pushed on the clients, migration and real-time synchronization became more challenging.
- Today, with direct browser to browser connectivity, explicit components and local storage it becomes possible to envision and build privacy-preserving Liquid Web applications that seamlessly flow across all user devices without having to evaporate into the Clouds
Acknowledgements
Daniele Bonetta, Tommi Mikkonen, Antero Taivalsaari, Kari Systä, Andrea Gallidabino, Vasileios Triglianos, Masiar Babazadeh, Yoël Luginbuhl
References
- Andrea Gallidabino, and Cesare Pautasso, Maturity Model for Liquid Web Architectures, 17th International Conference on Web Engineering (ICWE2017), Rome, Italy, Springer, June, 2017.
- Andrea Gallidabino, Cesare Pautasso, Ville Ilvonen, Tommi Mikkonen, Kari Systa, Jari-Pekka Voutilainen, and Antero Taivalsaari, On the Architecture of Liquid Software: Technology Alternatives and Design Space, 13th Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture (WICSA 2016), Venice, Italy, April, 2016.
- Andrea Gallidabino, and Cesare Pautasso, Deploying Stateful Web Components on Multiple Devices with Liquid.js for Polymer, 19th International ACM Sigsoft Symposium on Component-Based Software Engineering (CBSE 2016), Venice, Italy, pp. 85-90, April, 2016.
- Andrea Gallidabino, and Cesare Pautasso, The Liquid.js Framework for Migrating and Cloning Stateful Web Components across Multiple Devices, Proc. of the 25th International World Wide Web conference, Montreal, Canada, ACM, pp. 183-186, April, 2016.
- Tommi Mikkonen, Kari Systa, and Cesare Pautasso, Towards Liquid Web Applications, 15th International Conference on Web Engineering (ICWE 2015), Rotterdam, NL, Springer, pp. 134-143, June, 2015.
- Daniele Bonetta, and Cesare Pautasso, Towards liquid service oriented architectures, 20th international conference companion on World wide web (WWW 2011) - PhD Symposium, Hyderabad, India, ACM, pp. 337-342, April, 2011.
- Daniele Bonetta, and Cesare Pautasso, An Architectural Style for Liquid Web Services, 9th Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture (WICSA 2011), Boulder, CO, USA, pp. 232-241, June, 2011.
Maturity Model
Maturity Model
Level 1
Web 1.0
Level 2c
Rich Web
Level 3c
Realtime Web
Level 4c
Hybrid Web
Level 5
P2P Web
Logic Ultra-thin Thin Thin Thin Thick
State Centralized Centralized Centralized Centralized Distributed
Channel Pull Pull Push P2P P2P
Flow Migrate/Fork Migrate/Fork Migrate/Fork/Clone Migrate/Fork/Clone Migrate/Fork/Clone
Adapt Static Responsive Complementary Complementary Complementary
Hops 2 2 2 1 or 2 1
Privacy NO NO NO NO YES
Level 1
Web 1.0
Level 2d
Rich Web
Level 3d
Realtime Web
Level 4d
Hybrid Web
Level 5
P2P Web
Logic Ultra-thin Thin Thin Thin Thick
State Centralized Decentralized Decentralized Decentralized Distributed
Channel Pull Pull Push P2P P2P
Flow Migrate/Fork Migrate/Fork Migrate/Fork/Clone Migrate/Fork/Clone Migrate/Fork/Clone
Adapt Static Responsive Complementary Complementary Complementary
Hops 2 2 2 1 or 2 1
Privacy NO NO NO YES* YES
Web 1.0
Rich Web
Realtime Web
Hybrid Web
P2P Web
Logic Ultra-thin Thin Thin Thin Thick
State
Centralized
Centralized
Decentralized
Centralized
Decentralized
Centralized
Decentralized
Distributed
Channel Pull Pull Push Peer to Peer Peer to Peer
Flow Migrate/Fork Migrate/Fork Migrate/Fork/Clone Migrate/Fork/Clone Migrate/Fork/Clone
Adapt Static Responsive Complementary Complementary Complementary
Hops 2 2 2 1 or 2 1
Privacy NO NO NO YES* YES
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