The project regards the design and development of a meta-framework for the production of websites, web apps, portals and web-based CMS/ERP. The idea is the application of principles proven theoretically (important synergy with the university) and in production environments (company's know/how) in a novel way to get semi-complete ad-hoc solutions.
Several web agencies are relying heavily on open/source CMSs (mostly Wordpress) to cut costs and developers. This leads to: need of plug-ins, often not written with the same quality/care of the CMS to which they are applied, with occasional problems of stability and security, that sometimes push agencies to skip the updates of the CMS, with consequent risks; there is a flattening of the industry's level, in which the problems needs to adapt to technology whereas it should be the technology should adapt to actual cases; incapability to fully exploit what technology actually offer; security risks as the software is open, thus it's easier to spot vulnerabilities; companies have it harder to differentiate one from another, highlighting own strength; “hidden” costs problems.
The projects aims to develop a generator using the programming language ruby to generate a specialized framework built with robust, tested and ad-hoc code, along with a base of tests, security measures and conventions. The generator will at first produce Java and/or PHP code (as it is widespread) with the possibility to expand to other languages.
Key points of the project are: generation, formats for database definition, security, test suites, performance monitoring and advanced backtracing, consistent API.
A preliminary investigation of state-of-the-art technologies, particularly the evaluation of a possible migration to high-reliability distributed services, will also be carried out.
