OpenLink AJAX Toolkit

OpenLink AJAX Toolkit (OAT)

Developer(s)	OpenLink Software
Stable release	2.8
Written in	JavaScript
Type	JavaScript toolkit
License	GPL
Website	http://oat.openlinksw.com

OpenLink AJAX Toolkit (OAT) is a JavaScript-based toolkit for browser-independent Rich Internet Application development. It includes a rich collection of UI Widgets/Controls, Event Management System, and a truly platform independent Data Access Layer called AJAX Database Connectivity. OpenLink AJAX Toolkit is fully OpenAjax Alliance Conformant.

Functionality

There is a broad range of functionality in OAT including information visualization, GUI Widgets and Database Connectivity

Information Visualization

There are many different ways of visualizing data using OAT, these include:

• Charts such as Line chart, Pie chart and Bar graph.
• Grid view.
• Pivot table.

File System Interaction

• WebDAV Browser enables you to navigate a WebDAV instance as if it were a local filesystem.
• An Upload Interface supporting batch uploads.

Graphical User Interface Widgets

There are many Widgets in OAT to ease development of application User Interfaces, including:

• Combo Boxes, Combo Lists, Combo Buttons.
• "Quickedit" -- simple editing without text-box input.
• Sliders, Date Pickers and Color Pickers.
• "Enhanced Anchors" enabling you to show a new widget on screen.
• "Ghost drag" enabling the user to drag one item onto another and update objects accordingly. For example, this is quite useful for dragging items into a shopping cart.

Semantic Web and Aggregated Data Visualization

OAT is also able to cleanly visualize:

• RDF Data as a graph.
• RSS Feeds.

AJAX DataBase Connectivity

Provides a database independent data access layer for OAT and other JavaScript based libraries/frameworks/toolkits. The JavaScript equivalent of ODBC, JDBC, OLE DB, and ADO.NET, it uses XMLA to facilitate direct and platform independent access to remote database engines via XMLA providers.

As a core component of OAT, the Ajax Database Connectivity layer enables:

• Development and usage of data bound controls such as the Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps, Microsoft Virtual Earth, and OpenLayers mapping services controls, Pivot Tables, Comb Boxes, TimeLines, and many more.
• Development of data aware applications with the ability to calibrate change sensitivity via support for scrollable cursors (detached row-sets that are change sensitive)
• Build a complex SQL, XML, SPARQL, Web Services based applications without exposure to data access complexity

Miscellaneous

Other controls include:

• "Tree control" -- a content tree system where nodes can be expanded and collapsed.
• "Dock" -- a drag and drop widget feature similar to the movable iGoogle Gadgets.
• "Ticker" -- a ticker system reminiscent of Stock Ticker Machines.
• "FishEye" -- an Eye candy Icons System which is similar to the Mac OS X Dock System.
• "Timeline" -- a system which allows you to plot data onto a Timeline interface.
• "OS-Styled Windows" -- automatically recognizing which Operating system the user is using, OAT adjusts the Graphical User Interface widgets it generates to match the local environment.
• Cryptography.

Technical Information

File:OatArch.png

The Architecture of OpenLink AJAX Toolkit

Built-in functions are able to natively use/manipulate the following technologies:

• JSON
• Resource Description Framework (RDF) (including parsers for RDF/XML and Turtle)
• RSS
• Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)
• SOAP
• SPARQL
• SQL
• XML

Use

OAT is used extensively in the OpenLink Data Spaces and a variety of front-ends to the Virtuoso Universal Server that include:

• RDF Browser 2
• RDF Browser
• Interactive SPARQL Query Builder (iSPARQL)
• Web Forms Designer
• Database Designer
• Interactive "Query By Example" SQL Query Builder

External links

• Official OAT website includes more information, demos and downloads.
• OpenAjax Alliance website includes more information about OpenAjax Conformance.