Thursday, October 20, 2005
Web 2.0: 4 Layer Philosophy
Good article on 4 layer philosophy in "Web2.0" design.
from http://particletree.com/features/4-layers-of-separation/
Thanks to a lot of progressive education, web developers are starting to regularly practice three layers of separation (structural, presentational, and behavioral) in their projects and applications. Loosely assigned, XHTML builds the structure, CSS defines the presentation and JavaScript (for the most part) creates the behavior. This code segregation allows developers to create web applications that are organized, maintainable and reusable.
I believe, however, that a fourth layer of separation is being neglected: the data layer. This layer is represented by server side scripts that process and retrieve information from a data source. More often than not, we find this layer embedded messily into the structural layer. When the goal is to build modular architectures that are flexible and adaptable, combining structure and data processing is, in the long run, going to be very costly conceptual mistake. Through the use of a very promising XML technology, XSLT, we can free our data processing and retrieval logic from our display and structural logic completely and build web applications that are easier to understand and faster to iterate.
from http://particletree.com/features/4-layers-of-separation/
Thanks to a lot of progressive education, web developers are starting to regularly practice three layers of separation (structural, presentational, and behavioral) in their projects and applications. Loosely assigned, XHTML builds the structure, CSS defines the presentation and JavaScript (for the most part) creates the behavior. This code segregation allows developers to create web applications that are organized, maintainable and reusable.
I believe, however, that a fourth layer of separation is being neglected: the data layer. This layer is represented by server side scripts that process and retrieve information from a data source. More often than not, we find this layer embedded messily into the structural layer. When the goal is to build modular architectures that are flexible and adaptable, combining structure and data processing is, in the long run, going to be very costly conceptual mistake. Through the use of a very promising XML technology, XSLT, we can free our data processing and retrieval logic from our display and structural logic completely and build web applications that are easier to understand and faster to iterate.
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I've seen this diagram a couple of times and just think it's wrong on so many levels. It's an attempt to explain the MVC design pattern by looking almost exclusively at the View layer and decomposing it into more sub parts, ignoring the Controller and mentioning the Model (the actual beef of an application, IMHO) as "that Data Layer that has some server side scripts."
It's taking application design and putting form before function. Unfortunately, that does seem to be a common trend, making a lot of Web2.0 applications as tied to its particular UI as Web 1.0 applications did. The point should be that the application is UI agnostic, so that when the next widget set comes along, you don't rewrite your app from the ground up for Web3.0 or even just Web2.5.
It's taking application design and putting form before function. Unfortunately, that does seem to be a common trend, making a lot of Web2.0 applications as tied to its particular UI as Web 1.0 applications did. The point should be that the application is UI agnostic, so that when the next widget set comes along, you don't rewrite your app from the ground up for Web3.0 or even just Web2.5.
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