On the Right Track

Web development is often characterized by quick and dirty hacks with a colorful mixture of program code and HTML. However, an effort is underway to bring a more formal structure to web programming. For example, Rails [1] uses Ruby to implement a classical Model View Controller (MVC) framework, something that the world of smalltalk has used for some time. The MVC framework abstracts the data processing in the model from the GUI-based manipulation code (controller) and the representation code (view), see Figure 1. This technique of abstracting the data from the data processing methods can be applied to anything from a database table to a workflow model for a largescale enterprise. The model is partly or completely visualized in the view. Controllers react to user input (among other things) to initiate status changes within the model.