XWeb Architecture

A nice drawing of the architecture should go here. The basic concept looks like this:

Layer 1: Java programs for scripting

The main processes are handled by a set of Java classes that have interfaces for scripting. These tools are designed to be flexible and to allow scripting but they require some skills in command line operations and XML/XSLT editing. There is no application-specific support.

Target users: XML/XSL developers, website programmers

Layer 2: Generic Stylesheets

Generic stylesheets allow users to avoid writing XSLT themself. They can just define the buttons and banners and which files to process and then the website can be created. The stylesheet included in the XWeb distribution offers a number of parameters and adds a lot of CSS markup to allow different looks, specific stylesheets might be used to e.g. implement a corporate identity across different projects.

Target users: website programmers/designers who want a quick start with the option to get full control later

Layer 3: Applications

XWeb is designed to be flexible and thus is complex. Although we try to keep it simple it is not designed for people without at least some HTML and CSS knowledge. But XWeb offers a lot of options that might be useful for a large number of people, applications considered range from specific albums (pictures, music, etc.) to a full-featured website creation frontend with WYSIWYG interface. These frontends can use the Java backend and application specific XSLT templates, their implementation language is independent from the other layers as long as they can write XML files and call either the backend classes directly or via command line

Target users: depends on application but frontends should be very easy to use