Nikhil Kothari's Weblog : Atlas Architecture Overview
This post presents a high level overview of whats in Atlas today, along with the architecture diagram from yesterday's PDC session.I like to think of Atlas as an end-to-end framework, rather than simply being "yet another AJAX library". Atlas is designed to be an end-to-end application framework spanning client and server development, and the communication between the two. In addition it provides an application framework that enables developers to put together components, and wire them up together. It can be used both declaratively (using XML-script) and imperatively (using JavaScript). Finally it addresses how script functionality can be integrated into asp.net apps as well as HTML pages in a clean, and unobstrusive manner.
Actually, maybe the title is overstating things a bit in regards to the server side ASP.NET portion of the Atlas project; something I think we can safely assume will not be "officially"[1] released as open source.
However...
...unless you obsfucate and/or compress the Javascript that is sent to the browser, you can safely assume that this portion, by default, will remain quite open. But, then again, when the code is directly bound to ASP.NET and the underlying CLI-assemblies it makes things quite a bit less portable, and quite possibly, depending on how the Javascript is emmited and passed to the browser for dynamic evaluation could make this a completey moot point given the fact that to keep things nimple, light, with the ability to adjust the scripting code sent to each browser based on that particular browser implementation of ECMAScript, even that could be extremely limited in what is exposed and what is kept within the confines of the compiled assembly, or, maybe even external XML configuration files that store the proper information for each browser and each version of ECMAScript that any given version of that browser may support. With this in mind that title pretty much is a bold face lie. Not on purpose, but its definitely pushing the limits of something that could even remotely fit into the Open Source space as the title suggests. So why don't I just change it? If I did all of this text I just wrote would go to waste.... and you don't want me to just throw away perfectly good text, do you?
Actually, its not such a bad point... Well, anyway, the above linked article is a good one... If you just ignore all of this and read that I'm sure you'll be all the better for it.
If you've made it this far, Enjoy!
[1] A mere technicality really when you consider the fact that any CIL-based assembly whos' source has not been obsfucated can be viewed in all of its open source glory using Lutz Reoder's Reflector project in which through either built-in and/or add-on support can be transformed and viewed as the equivalent source code in most, if not all of the current main stream .NET-enabled languages as well as several non-main stream niche languages. In many ways the fact that Lutz is a Microsoft employee who is currently working on an incubation project (see the entry to his blog for more details), reporting directly to Eric Rudder, the original visionary and ongoing force behind all that is the .NET platform adds quite a bit to the idea that MS's CLI implementation, in many ways, is already as open source as you want it to be. Just takes a little extra effort on your part to make it so... I know, thats a lot to expect. You're right MS is PURE EVIL! Those .Bastards! What do think, we've got all the time in the world to have to spend all the time it takes to double click and exe, load the assembly of interest, and then look at the result in the source code of choice by having to go the "Extra Mile" while we painstakingly push our mouse to the applications menu bar to then have to click a menu item, to then further have to select the language we want to view it in.
Its like they don't even care, huh!? How depressing... :(
[NOTE: Please, please, please don't be the one person is reads this and thinks what I just said was in any way shape, or form, a real rant. And furthermore if you were actually nodding your head in agreement, getting all worked up and upset by those evil Redmond "CloseSourced HillBillies of the software industry"... you may want to look into professional help. Really. It might do ya some good. ;)
Laugh!