Welcome to the wireXN Project Home
Our goal is to produce a programming platform for desktop-like Web applications.
License
wireXN is open source software and is built only on top of other open source software and public specifications, e.g. Eclipse, Maven and the W3C specs. Our source code is available under the Lesser GNU Public License (LGPL).
This means that you can use the wireXN tools and run-time libraries on any computer, including on a computer in a commercial organization. You do not need to register or pay for wireXN software. You can re-use the tools and the run-time libraries to build your own specialized tools and libraries. You can change the sources to match your needs; however, in this case you are required to publish the changes under the LGPL.
Our Unique Feature Set
- you can design, code, compile and debug rich user front-ends for your Web applications, as you currently may do it with MFC, VB or Swing tools
- you can reuse pieces of these front-ends in their object form, perhaps from your own earlier applications or from 3rd party developers
- you are free to choose any server technology as long as it supports the HTTP and SOAP protocols
- your users can deploy these front-ends on any kind of application server without altering any of its configuation settings
- your users can access these applications using any operating system and browser combinations, without being required to install additional software or changing the configuration of their machines
- you can run a "generate", "compile", "test", "package", "deploy" cycle with one command without launching a visual IDE for that
- you can use your favorite IDE or just plain text editors for hacking sources
- you can generate rich user interfaces from the UML models of your Web applications
Why Open Source?
We believe that community developed software has greater chances to succeed in the marketplace. However, we reserve the right to develop commercially licensed extensions and we will strive to support you in building your own extensions, either open source or commercial.
Current Development Status and Roadmap
We have released a pre-alpha version in which most of the core functions are working, these include:
- a browser-based run-time and component-oriented framework
- a high-level component-oriented programming language and compiler
- Ant tasks and Maven plugins for building and packaging wireXN applications as WAR files
- Eclipse wizards, views, code editors and integrated builder
- proof-of-concept wrapper for an AJAX-based GUI framework (ExtJS)
Still missing:
- compiler -- fully implemented type-system validation
- GUI wrappers -- fully implemented ExtJS wrappers
For the beta release we plan:
- a source code debugger fully integrated with Eclipse
- a GUI designer fully implement with Eclipse
- model-driven generator for wireXN applications based on some EMF compliant MDA™ framework like AndroMDA, Acceleo® or Fornax/Sculptor