Project Abstract:

My internship projects with IBM Singapore have been centered around the development of next-generation electronic self-service application framework (eSSAF). eSSAF is a highly extensible framework with plug-in based architecture. Moving from C++ towards Java-and-XML-based framework will largely enhance the application development process. This report focuses on the development of a key component in eSSAF – XML Application Builder based-on Eclipse plug-in. The builder incrementally builds the XML definitions of an application by validating the XML documents against XML schemas and performing cross-reference syntax check against a set of rules within a single document and across multiple documents. The key challenges include extending Eclipse platform through extension points and plug-ins, mapping of application flow into XML, design of a rule-based architecture for cross-reference syntax check, and speeding up the building process with the minimum memory consumption.