New Concept
- This is an idea for discussion, please feel free to edit, comment, etc.
Information
This explains the idea of easy tools in Sakai. These are simple tools which are effectively basic webapps which a user can write by adhereing to a set of conventions. The easy tool could be easily written and the Easy Tool Manager UI would allow the tool to be uploaded and activated on a running Sakai server. The remainder of the webapp code would be generated automatically and the user could download the full app and develop it into a more advanced Sakai app later if desired.
Easy Tools
- Goals/Needs fulfilled
- Easy tools are meant to meet the need of being extremely easy to write and deploy
- Developers who have never really seen Java (only PHP or things like it) should be able to write an easy tool
- Minimal Java knowlege should be required
- No knowledge of maven should be required
- No understanding of Spring/Hibernate/etc. should be required
- Tools should be able to be controlled via a simple UI (probably admin users only)
- Tools will only be able to do simple things (display information, generate URLs, handle very simple forms)
- Easy tools would be able to be converted into a fully structured Sakai tool
- Sakai service/data access
- Access to data within Sakai would be provided via a simple master static cover (probably called Sakai) or via component name conventions
- The master cover would provide access to a limited set of Sakai services and data which are safe to access within Sakai
- Access to data within Sakai would be provided via a simple master static cover (probably called Sakai) or via component name conventions
- Documentation
- Comprehensive easy-to-use descriptions of how to build a tool
- Clear explanation of service/data access
- Several examples of commonly used techniques
- Several examples of simple tools