Flare: Architecture for rapid and easy development of Internet-based Applications

TL;DR

The paper introduces Flare, an architecture that simplifies and accelerates the development of internet applications across multiple languages by reducing server-side programming and integrating web services via a unified API.

Contribution

It presents a structured architecture that enables rapid, multi-language application development with minimal server-side code and integrated web service access.

Findings

Developed a micro-blogging application using Flare APIs

Demonstrated application in both graphical and command-line modes

Reduced development complexity by eliminating server-side programming

Abstract

We propose an architecture, Flare, that is a structured and easy way to develop applications rapidly, in a multitude of languages, which make use of online storage of data and management of users. The architecture eliminates the need for server-side programming in most cases, creation and management of online database storage servers, re-creation of user management schemes and writing a lot of unnecessary code for accessing different web-based services using their APIs. A Web API provides a common API for various web-based services like Blogger [2], Wordpress, MSN Live, Facebook [3] etc. Access Libraries provided for major programming languages and platforms make it easy to develop applications using the Flare Web Service. We demonstrate a simple micro-blogging service developed using these APIs in two modes: a graphical browser-based mode, and a command-line mode in C++, which provide two different interfaces to the same account and data.