Infolan Newsletter


	Many clients use Attend Service ® as their tool for Customer Service and HelpDesk management. Originally, Attend was developed as a Lotus Notes application. In order to improve flexibility and facilitate Attend usage outside of the Lotus Notes environment, Attend was converted to a web based application written in Java using the Java2EE framework. Infolan now offers Attend in two versions: Attend Notes and Attend-Java.


	Web application development is a field of expertise evolving quickly. Building an application within the constraints of a web browser is not easy due to the limitations of HTML. However recent technology improvements now allow web developers to offer an improved user experience at higher speed with more flexibility. An example of such a new technology is Ajax (Asynchronous Javascript and XML) identified in February 2005 in the following article: http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000385.php It refers to a combination of web techniques to create interactive web applications. The intent is to make web pages feel more responsive by exchanging small amounts of data with the server behind the scenes, so that the entire web page does not have to be reloaded each time the user makes a change. This is meant to increase the web page's interactivity, speed, and usability. Within Attend, Ajax is used to 'dynamically' load and display hierarchical data such as ticket typologies and other parent-child relationships. It has reduced the loading time of several Attend pages and prevents reloading of the same page when levels of the hierarchical data are opened or closed. Another change behind the scenes within Attend-Java has been the migration to Java 1.5 combined with the replacement of the framework used to render the Attend web pages. Java 1.5 is the current stable version of the Java programming language offered by SUN (http://java.sun.com) with improvements such as faster compilation and runtime execution. Also some structural improvements were added to the language such as generics and annotations. Attend has been converted to work with Java 1.5 benefitting from these improvements and thus offering a more flexible web application with faster development cycles.

Migrating to Java 1.5 also opened the path to a new presentation framework. Attend used to be based on Apache Struts (http://struts.apache.org) the open source framework developed by the Apache Group. Struts has been for some years the most popular presentation framework on the market but is no longer 'state-of-the-art'. Instead the framework called Stripes (http://stripes.mc4j.org/confluence/display/stripes/Home) uses the new features available in Java 1.5 to offer a much more flexible and easy to use framework. After migration from Struts to Stripes the amount of Java code required by Attend has decreased by approximately 30% which reduces our maintenance costs and improves the time to market for new features and improvements. With these evolutions Attend-Java now offers a solid web application which is easily configurable to meet specific customer requirements. Many Infolan clients are already appreciating the benefits from Attend.

Finally it is worth noting that Attend Service has entered the certification process to obtain the logo "Powered by SAP NetWeaver". This certification is expected to be final in the first semester of 2007.

More information about Attend-java can be found on the website:

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