To Do List

Just a hashing of what needs to be done on Alt Framework.

Alt Framework Core (JavaScript)

• SQueaL
  • Rewrite needed!
  • SQL Schema
    • Finalize XML format
    • SQueaL types
  • Delight
  • Generalizing database connection (HSQL/Derby support?)
  • SQueaL types
  • Data validation functions
  • JNDI Database pooling
• Onion ML
  • Finalize format for data processing and attributes
  • Form control (along with SQueaL types/Dictator)
• Dictator
  • Documentation!
  • Form control (along with SQueaL types/Onion ML)
  • Cache control
  • Static file sending/custom file pushers
  • Refinements to API
• JSDoc
  • Further improvements to display
  • Parse .js files and display actual function definitions with comments
    • Find jsdoc comments for file/module overview?
    • Find jsdoc comments for member properties?
  • Switch to using Onion ML
  • Caching
  • File generation for web site
  • Control over display
• Mail
  • JavaMail support?
• JavaScript output
  • Compressed/obfuscated scripts
  • Versioning/caching

AltServlet (Java)

Some of these were pulled from a chat conversation, hence the more casual writing style. :-)

• Timeout /Thread killing code
  • Currently using Future/ThreadPool to run the scripts on a delayed timeout, which doesn't work.
    • It kills the script to the browser, but the javascript still runs in the background.
    • It is also restrictive since I have to set the timeout in the config file.
  • Control timeout from javascript:
    • E.g., "request 5 more seconds of time" if you know you're going to do a slow operation
    • Ability to catch timeout inside Javascript (to display a custom error, for example).
      
  • Rhino has a method for counting byte codes. It only works in interpreted mode, but you could pretend these errors only happen in development environment. Or we can always run in interpreted mode.
• Detecting user abort
• Fixing Rhino optimizer?
• Ability to enable/disable runtime file modification time checking
  • Ability to optimize this runtime checking to speed it up?
  • Ability to flush cache? Detect updates?
• Refine script/class loaders
• Finalize Java Servlet folder structure
  • Where do scripts go?
  • How to JavaScript modules work?
• Security manager/isolation/jailing code
  • Lock down the AltServlet to prevent certain actions such as System.exit
  • Potentially lock down socket/file access
  • Allow privilege elimination from JavaScript for running "insecure" code
  • Look at Rhino/JavaScript security manager features as well?
• Continuations
  • Support for Jetty's continuations features, with some kind of means to pause scripts during runtime while waiting for some event.
  • This would be useful for long running scripts with lots of wait/blocking time.
  • We could combine this with Rhino's continuation support and allow proper continuations.
• Debugger
  • Rhino has a graphical debugger thing, but it is kinda crufty and does not work well with the whole servlet mechanism.
  • It would be nice to integrate some kind of debugger, but I am not sure what the best approach here is.
    • AltGUI could be revamped to integrate some form of debugger.
    • One cool idea is to somehow inject into the standard java/eclipse debugger. So that you can debug both java and javascript in the same standard interface. (IDEAL!)

Other/Misc.

• Ant build script to generate releases
• Improved AltGUI
• Benchmarking/profiling/optimization
  • Compare interpreted/optimized modes
  • Profile to see where the bottlenecks actually are