Last week I wrote about the ‘why’ of a next generation Ilwis. This week I will talk a bit more about the foundation of the framework. We have a number of explicit goals we want to reach with.
- Connectivity. The physical format or location of data is irrelevant. It is about the information contained in the data. So independence of format and location is a primary goal
- Interoperability. Integration of different providers of functionality in a transparent way. Not limited to the access protocol they use.
- Accessibility at programming level. Ilwis is and will be written in C++ which can be a technical challenging language. To ease the threshold for external programmers we will
– Use an external C++ interface that is very simple to use for those who want/need to program in C++
– Provide bindings to other languages. Python and Java are the primary candidate
– Ease the threshold for desktop – UI programming - Flexibility. The framework must be deployable in multiple roles. From the traditional fat-desktop-client to lean mobile clients and client/server configurations. There will not be one Ilwis, but many (in different roles).