Creating thin clients with Ajax and Java EE

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Founded in 1998, Iconix Pharmaceuticals Company is engaged in research and industrial software development. The company is a pioneer in Chemogenomics, Chemogenomics is a discipline that uses chemical and genetic methods to delve into a mountain of data that is necessary to develop new drugs and market them.

One of the major challenges for companies is to create a new drug or provide the information needed by the pharmaceutical industry to integrate data from disparate, disparate databases, and to analyze them, with compelling results. Most researchers agree that it is almost impossible to make significant discoveries by creating multipath connections when data cannot be obtained from a single data source.

Drugmatrix Solutions

At Iconix Pharmaceuticals, we developed a Drugmatrix software application system to effectively process our chemogenomics database. To create such a solution, we know that we have to combine high-performance information processing systems with an interactive GUI interface to allow researchers to conduct an iterative study and combine research and display information in their displays.

This article discusses the role of Iconix Pharmaceuticals in the development of Drugmatrix software application Systems Asynchronous JavaScript plus XML (AJAX). It includes our choices in the development decision process and why we decided to use a rich Internet application (RIA) based on Ajax. In this article, we also discuss the lessons we have learned and where we believe this technology will lead us.

Rich Internet Application (RIA) technology and Ajax

In essence, RIA Technologies combine robust graphical user interfaces (graphical user interface short GUI) with browser-based information processing systems. If so, then the C/S model of the FAT client and b/s browser-based thin client between the bridge. Furthermore, the Ajax-based RIA Web information Processing system processes data quickly and without the need for pre-installed plug-ins, applets, and Active-X.

The role of Ajax

Today, as a useful and powerful web development technology, AJAX technology enables search engines and other consumer applications to greatly enhance the user experience of web surfers. In addition, Ajax makes it possible to create a solution that delivers business data with a rich GUI infrastructure that costs less than the creation, maintenance, and implementation of a FAT client or a plug-in based solution. Features, high productivity, greater ability to display data and less overhead can achieve greater competitiveness.

The highlight of application development

Drugmatrix is a three-layer, extensible information (three-tiered Extensible Informatics Short XIS) structure. Consists of a data warehouse, an application server (including a communication mechanism that passes data in a graph-related XML format to the owner) and a user interface. The application server is configurable and is configured by describing the metadata of the model of the Data Warehouse. To simplify adding data analysis and display tools to the system, the application server uses plug-in technology. The user interface is also dynamically configurable by using metadata that can search for and display all data items.

(Click to view the original image)

Resolution Steps

Iconix Pharmaceuticals's development team has considered and dismissed several design options.

1. Embed Java applets in Web pages

This scheme is inefficient for large chunks of data based on Chemogenomics databases. For every query that requires dozens of columns and hundreds of rows of data, it is quite clear that the system will be quickly paused. The Drugmatrix ' system wants to differentiate between data streams and HTML, and caching data on the client allows the server to deliver more data. The system also wants the client to be able to access the cached data when the researcher is back and forth between the data list and a single "Detail" HTML page.

2. Use the Java Server Pages (JSP) model when data is passed to the JSP page

While this scenario is fairly good, the development team finds that the number of data to be displayed on the page is too large, which can discourage users from using interest. In addition, in terms of efficiency, the exchange and transfer of graphic data is particularly slow. For example, Iconix confidence Interval graphic--is used to display scanned gene expression data, which takes at least 2-3 seconds to load, because this scenario requires a dedicated graphical servlet to display each of the graphs individually.

Examples of Drugmatrix confidence Interval graphic

Note: This figure contains the Drugmatrix confidence Interval Graphic, which is displayed instantaneously through an HTML form vector pattern.

3. An AJAX development Framework plus Interface Builder

The last adopted solution, through the use of the Tibco Common interface framework, is very easy to handle complex Ajax. This mature scenario includes the ability to help the development team deliver Drugmatrix to the market faster than other scenarios and reduce development costs. The main differences in this programme include:

。 Visual development tools, similar APIs and extension libraries, efficient GUI components

。 A modular, publicly based architecture that can reuse and customize objects

。 Client data caching, which saves data for client use throughout the session, reduces unnecessary access to the database, and enables the server to deliver more data

。 Support synchronous, asynchronous, and real-time communication capabilities through leadership standards and protocols such as HTTP/S, XML, and SOAP

RIA Solutions can use XML to produce full-color HTML tables that produce images 50% faster than Java applets and 97% faster than JSPs.

Figure III: Drugmatrix Data Browser Environment

Figure I: Drugmatrix Scalable Information System (XIS) architecture

The Drugmatrix UI economy shows a large amount of information-related data by using the following characteristics:

。 Use outer tabs to identify different information domains (data warehouse dimension tables)

。 Use inner tabs to include information for the callout field (data Warehouse fact tables)

。 Extensible hyperlinks to support domain to domain browsing

The Expression test field (Figure III) contains 10 fact tables, each fact tables have 50-300 records. Although this page contains only 12 records, it can quickly and skillfully overturn the next page without refreshing the entire page. Columns can be scaled and transformed, and records can be categorized.

In addition to the TIBCO generic interface, the AJAX-based RIA product we chose for the Drugmatrix client, most vendors offer JSP or HMTL based solutions. None of this is beyond our original vision of a major breakthrough.

Income

Drugmatrix's GUI meets the information requirements of pharmaceutical companies: easy to use, interacting with previous fat clients. Iconix Pharmaceuticals's development team is interested in developing such a GUI: meeting a wider range of drug-related information and providing more views on how to display this data. In addition, the team is interested in developing a Web page that transcends basic types of pages or documents, and minimizes development and maintenance costs.

In particular, Ajax technology is used during the development of Drugmatrix to allow Iconix:

。 Integration of 200个百万 drug data into a rich, visually interactive interface

。 than the standard client server architecture, delivering Drugmatrix to customers half the time and reducing development costs by two-thirds

。 The leverage of the GUI separates our products from our competitors ' products.

。 Different from a desktop application system, we use standard browsers to save customers the cost of publishing and maintenance

Other aspects

The development team hopes that an AJAX based RIA solution will accelerate the development of Drugmatrix, as we have hoped, as shown in the following example:

For scientific research institutions such as Iconix, there is a continuing demand for new and improved tools. One of the challenges that we face is also an important source of overhead: specifications for the rapid development of new products.

Before using the RIA framework, based on the Internet Development Environment (IDE) solution, we need to write a page specification into the development plan and send them to the product Development Board. Including video conferencing time, the whole process usually takes 3-4 weeks.

Often, Iconix developers create and modify page specifications in a very confusing way, often halfway through the development session. These specifications are 80% complete and require a small amount of optimization, but these optimizations will greatly reduce development time.

We believe that the advantages of Ajax are not ICONIX development environment, other projects are certainly the same. For all the development of an enterprise-class system that uses the RIA framework, Ajax helps to achieve the same robustness and the same benefits. Ajax makes it possible to publish an efficient, browser-based application that is not disruptive, cost-effective, and generates a FAT client desktop application.

What do we learn?

Perhaps the most important lesson we've learned during the development of Drugmatrix is that by allowing us to create a sense, view, and run a smart system like a desktop system, and make us faster and less expensive than we thought, Ajax subverts some of the inertia of thin clients. An AJAX solution for RIA makes it possible for us to continue to develop efficient systems ahead.

Further

The success of Drugmatrix development has increased Iconix's interest in Ajax. At the end of 2005, the development team planned to complete the necessary work to transform Drugmatrix into a Web service.

This work allows large pharmaceutical companies-many of which are current customers-to use part of the Drugmatrix in different departments, adjust their own needs or use the data generated by Drugmatrix in their own applications.

The Iconix development team also completed ahead of schedule for real-time data display issues based on a financial services system.

about the Author: John Calvin graduated from California State University, with a computer b.s. and biological b.s. He served at IBM and later joined the biotech industry, a senior engineer at Iconix Pharmaceuticals.