More invisible site changes

As I started building this personal homepage last year, I used a lot of XML and XSLT to provide its content in a manageable way. The XML is transformed on the server site, which is why this internal site structure cannot be seen from the outside. As one step further, the content (e.g. the publication list) now comes from a data-managing Web service, which my colleague Andreas Heil is working on. One of many advantages here is that gradually, we will be able to reuse our content in more places across the whole VSR site.

Application integration

This week, I evaluated some open source wiki and blog engines based on ASP.NET in combination with idFS. I turned out that idFS is pretty straightforward to integrate with existing code, especially in cases where the application already makes use of the standard ASP.NET mechanisms for application security. In some cases, it was even possible to link the applications built-in roles with idFS roles without touching the code. I finally chose screwturn wiki and blogengine.net, which will be used for supplying a blog and a wiki for the ISWE site.

ICWE Paper Deadline extended

The deadline for this year’s ICWE conference is approaching. It has been extended to February 22, 2008. The Eighth International Conference on Web Engineering (ICWE2008) will be held in July 2008 in Yorktown Heights, New York, USA. ICWE2008 aims at promoting research and scientific excellence on Web Engineering and at bringing together practitioners, scientists, and researchers interested in technologies, methodologies, tools, and techniques used to develop and maintain Web-based applications.

idFS Version 2.3

idFS Version 2.3 is complete and available for download. It includes some minor fixes and is adjusted to .NET 3.5 / Visual Studio 2008. In addition, I have installed updated online demo on a public web server. The case study in the Web Engineering practical course worked out well. All groups were able to integrate their application, although one group needed some help for configuring advanced features.

End of lecture period in Chemnitz

After 15 weeks of teaching, it’s the end of the lecture period in Chemnitz, and I’m staring into another golden period of two month of quality research time. The results from this semester’s student feedback reviews were good, but improvable. The students in the practical course rated the interestingness of their project with 5.75 / 7, generally stating that they would prefer a longer project phase and shorter exercise phase. The students in the lecture-related tutorial gave an average of 5 / 7 points, with several requests for more practical, programming-related exercises and less reading homework.