Automatic Conversion of Desktop Applications

to Java Web Technology

Matija Tomašković Ruben Picek
Evolva d.o.o. Faculty of Organization and Informatics
- University of Zagreb
Zagrebačka 94, 42000 Varaždin, Croatia Pavlinska 2, 42000 Varaždin, Croatia
[email protected] [email protected]

Abstract. This paper analyses the problem of based software development has been proven as
automatic conversion of legacy desktop applications useful technique to develop an application. However,
to Java web applications with emphasis on how such the development of a framework itself is considered
conversion methodology can help in migration of complex due to its large size and the vague
legacy desktop developers to modern web requirements. [3]
development. Authors explain how automatic
converter can enable desktop developers to start
delivering new web applications immediately without 2 Desktop vs Web Development
knowing complex web technologies.
Finally, the paper will show that after conversion Before the World Wide Web was established, desktop
of legacy applications to web technology, it is also applications ran locally on computers and users had to
possible to enrich converted applications with modern manage their installation for any update, download,
web and business functionalities. installation, etc. Later, accessibility through the web
began to be used to develop applications that support
Keywords. Desktop2web converter, business web business processes – those applications are called
application, web framework, Java web development, business web applications.
rapid application development (RIA), desktop Web application is a client-server application that
application, migration, converter, conversion, uses a web browser as its client program. It delivers
automatic code generation interactive services through web servers distributed
over the Internet (or intranet). A web application can
present dynamically tailored content based on request
1 Introduction parameters, tracked user behaviors, and security
considerations. [4]
Authors of this paper explored the benefits of
automatic conversion in the process of migrating
legacy desktop applications and legacy developers to
web development. The migration refers to teams that
develop desktop applications, either having graphical
user interface (GUI) or text mode user interface
(TUI), but want to develop in a web environment.
When considering strategies of legacy system
modernization to web development, it is important to
preserve advantages of the legacy system, such as its
high business value and good quality code, but also to
take care of other issues like maintenance and
upgrading. The most appropriate strategy that meets
these objectives is the migration strategy.
The migration strategy is the approach that moves
the entire legacy system and its core framework to the
new environment while preserving the original Figure 1. Technical difference between desktop and
system's data and functionality. [2] web development
Authors propose Evolution Framework as a
concrete Java web framework that must exist for the
purpose of the automatic conversion. Framework-
 The biggest difference between developing user and a desktop application), is one of the most
desktop and web applications is in the way the user popular technologies for web applications. [4]
interface is built and how it works, as seen in Fig. 1. Creating a user interface in a way that complete
Many authors argue the importance of user interface code is written from scratch is appropriate for small
design within the overall application development. [6] web applications, but for enterprise applications
[7] which consist of hundreds or thousands of different
forms such development is a very slow process prone
2.1 The architecture of desktop user to errors and, in the end, very expensive and hard to
learn. Significant improvements in software
interface development efficiency are achieved by automatic
code generation which ultimately results in higher
User interfaces for enterprise desktop applications are
productivity and uniformly high quality. [1]
designed in a visual editor provided by some of the
desktop technology: Visual Basic, Delphi, Visual C++
or some 4GL tools like Panther (Prolifics).
When it comes to writing the code for the form, 3 Business aspects of migration to
developer's code typically handles events on the form. web development
The very first event that developer handles is usually
the one that happens when the form is displayed to the During the process of migration there are certain
user for the first time and the developer wants to business aspects that must be considered by
initialize it. Later on, the user will click on a button, development department and its management:
or double-click a row in the grid, or press a keyboard Aspect 1: a protection of business know-how.
shortcut, and the code should handle these events Outsourcing partners is a common case during the
interacting with a database or external services in a process of migration, but outsourcing the
multi-tier systems. development of business functionalities implies
giving away knowledge about company processes and
2.2 Characteristics of web user interface plans. Therefore, it is important to protect the
business know-how.
When developing web applications, designing the Aspect 2: a protection of existing workforce. The
user interface is much more complex. Developing a existing development team has many advantages that
web-based user interface can be quite tedious, it is a a company wants to retain:
distributed program which has to run in a hostile - they have a huge business know-how gained through
environment. The web application user interface is the many years of working in the company,
way through which the web user communicates to the - they have a good relationship and communication
web system. Web applications are essentially client- with application users across the company,
server applications - there is always a web client. [8] - they are the only ones who are versed in existing
When web applications are developed with web business applications and can fix or upgrade them
framework that doesn't provide a visual editor, quickly,
programmers have to write the form layout character - they are very efficient in desktop development and
by character, tag by tag, using HTML, CSS and excellent as a team.
JavaScript code. Some web frameworks do provide Aspect 3: continuous delivery. As company
visual editors that generate HTML code, but they are processes are evolving, the existing development team
just partly helping to make HTML code while has to maintain current enterprise applications and
programmer still needs to touch up generated HTML spend time on upgrading them constantly. This means
code manually and after bigger manual changes some they don't have enough time to learn new complex
visual editors cannot load modified HTML pages web technologies from scratch. This brings into
again. question the need to learn web technologies quickly
Another important aspect of web development is and start delivering new web applications without
communication. Web architecture requires the use of slowing down current development and delivery.
HTTP to send an initial form layout to a web browser. Hiring new people is often not an option because it
Then, when a user clicks a button, AJAX technology represents an additional cost.
has to be used in the web browser to call the event Aspect 4: reuse of existing applications. Over time,
code on the web server to interact with the database. current enterprise desktop applications is difficult to
Finally, developers have to return the update maintain because the old technical knowledge will be
information from the web server to the web browser lost and old software or old hardware support will be
to update form layout, e.g. the data grid with new data discontinued. Usually, there are thousands of desktop
rows or input fields with new values. AJAX forms in action. Some applications are still being
(Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), which supports upgraded very often and the migration process must
an immediate dynamic interaction between a user and allow to continue improving and upgrading them on
a web application (similar to the interaction between a web technology.
Aspect 5: a complete framework for the efficient
development. It is recommended that web
development framework is powerful, built for
enterprise environment and has a visual editor for
forms. Also, if framework includes popular features
that are required for modern enterprise web
applications, this additionally contributes to the
efficiency of development. These days users demand
not just grids with data and forms with input fields but
also document management, workflow and task
management features, reporting to different file
formats such as PDF or Excel, integration with e-mail
and web applications which must also work on mobile
devices and tablets.
Aspect 6: focus on solving business issues, not
technical issues. Business programmers must be
focused on solving business issues and not on solving
technical problems in the web environment. The web
framework must hide the complexity of web
architecture and web technologies. Figure 2. Evolution Framework tools

4 Methodology of the migration

process 5 Desktop-to-web converter
Keeping all mentioned aspects in mind, it is necessary When considering how to move the existing
to make two important decisions at the beginning of applications to the web, a software tool can convert
the migration process: choosing technology and old desktop forms to web forms automatically. With
choosing framework. such a converter, thousands of old form layouts and
For this research, Java has been chosen because it thousands of lines of old code could be automatically
is a proven technology for development of enterprise- converted to the web environment (Fig. 3.). This
level business web applications, it is free to download saves the developers significant amount of time
and there is a huge Java open source community with needed for rewriting old code.
many available solutions.
When it comes to choosing framework, all above
objectives imply that desktop programmers must be
able to skip the use of complex web technologies and
quickly start with the delivery of web forms. Such an
efficient development of modern enterprise
applications can be achieved only by using a web
framework that allows desktop-like web development.
A framework of such kind is Evolution Framework
whose tools were developed specifically for the
migration process as described in this paper. An
overview of Evolution Framework tools can be seen
in Fig. 2. Figure 3. Desktop-to-web converter
Those high and specific requirements for
framework leads us to the methodology of web The main purpose of the converter is to convert
engineering that promotes successful web application old code, but in this paper we particularly demonstrate
development through all phases of development, how it enables a great migration strategy for
including migration of legacy system to web developers.
environments. [10]
Meeting the unique requirements of web-based
applications during whole application lifecycle can 6 The migration strategy when
bring the potential chaos in web-based system
development under control, minimise risks, and having a converter
enhance maintainability and quality. [9]
When having a converter, authors propose that
migration process is done in 3 steps:
6.1 Web development with converter Sometimes, the conversion of old applications is
the first step in migration project and afterwards the
With the desktop-to-web converter it is possible to delivery of new web forms can begin.
start the web development almost immediately. First,
a developer has to setup a web development, testing
and production environments. A visual system 7 Architecture of converter
overview screen makes this much easier, without
bothering with many configuration files. In desktop technology, every form has two main
Then, a programmer will write new forms in the parts: the layout information and the form event code
old desktop technology, but when the desktop form is (Fig. 5.) Therefore, the converter must include the
finished the programmer will use the desktop-to-web conversion of both form layout and form code.
converter to convert the desktop form to a web form. Layout information for a single form is usually
This way, desktop programmers is able to start written as a binary or text file. Such a file contains a
delivering web forms and web applications instantly. list of all controls like buttons, input fields and grids
which appear on the form along with their initial
6.2 Comparison of codes property values like x and y position,
enabled/disabled, visible/invisible, etc.
The desktop-to-web converter is not just a tool for
converting old forms to web forms. It is also a
learning tool. After converting desktop forms,
developers can compare the old desktop form code
with the new Java form code and learn the syntax
more quickly. A comparison of the old and new
converter code can be seen at Fig. 4. Some authors
propose certain methods to improve accuracy of code
conversion. [12]

Figure 5. The process of conversion

The first step in creating the converter was to

make it handle the conversion of this old layout
information to the new layout information written as a
visual editor form file. After the conversion, users can
Figure 4. New converted Java code on the left, the old use the visual editor to modify the form layout and
desktop code on the right add some more controls to the form, even some
advanced ones that didn't exist before in the old
After the developers learn the new Java code environment.
syntax and get familiar with framework tools, they Desktop event code for old desktop forms is an
can start designing form layouts directly in visual actual code that consists of functions that handle
editor and write Java code using e.g. Eclipse for Java specific events on the forms like form initialization,
as a popular IDE. button click, double-click on the row, field validation
after the focus is lost, etc. The second step in creating
6.3 Conversion of old applications the converter was to make it handle the conversion of
such event code. The converter must analyze the old
Moving old applications to the web environment will code and make equivalent Java code.
be done simply by using the desktop-to-web Some old commonly used API functions, available
converter. Usually, this step starts with top priority in the old desktop framework, must be converted as
candidates for migration, the ones that will soon be well, so that the programmer has almost the same
out of old software or hardware support, or maybe look and feel of the Java code in the web
those that they want to upgrade with new modern environment.
technical features.
8 Example of conversion
The conversion described in this paper must be
supported by a web framework whose web engine
logic is very similar to the desktop engine's logic.
Such a web framework must have the following
features implemented:
- it must be capable of completely rendering the initial
HTML form in the web browser, based on the layout
information from the visual editor,
- it must render Java code for each form with all the
controls on the form so that the programmer's form Figure 7. Old TUI form
event code could easily communicate with the
controls on the web server in Java,
- it must provide mechanisms that will send user
events from the web browser to the web server
directly via AJAX, so that the Java form event code
could save the data entered by the users to a database
and/or read the data from the database and update
form controls,
- it must provide mechanisms to return event results
from Java code on the web server back to the form in
the web browser upon updating form content.
This way, programmers never have to bother with
HTML, CSS, JavaScript, HTTP and AJAX, and they
can focus on writing event code and interacting with
databases and other external business systems.
In order to demonstrate how converter works, here Figure 8. Old GUI form
are presented results of the conversion compared with
the old forms. 8.2 Conversion of an old form
8.1 Old desktop form The legacy desktop IDE has an option to export a
form to a single file which contains layout
A sample of the old desktop form in a visual editor information and form event code.
provided by a desktop technology is shown at Fig. 6.. The desktop-to-web converter tool is a part of
Evolution Framework and it is a web based tool. This
web application is run on a local web server and can
access exported form files in a local folder, a sample
can be seen at Fig. 9.:

Figure 6. Old form in Panther IDE

Fig. 7. is showing same form in action having a text

user interface, and the same form with a graphical
user interface is shown at Fig. 8.

Figure 9. The desktop-to-web converter

When running the converter, it creates three things:

- first, it creates an XML file with the form layout The main objective of application framework is to
which is an input file for the visual editor so that the promote the reuse of both design and code in the
form layout can be modified in the editor and later development of new applications. Reuse of existing
upgraded with new advanced controls; components dramatically reduces the production cost
- then it generates a Java code with all the controls on and improve the quality.
the form. This code is a Java "model" of the form that The Rapid Application Development Framework,
the programmer will communicate with either to read or simply RADF, aims to make application
input field values, fill the grid or hide buttons. The development more efficiently by means of
programmer will never modify this code, it will be architectural reuse. [3]
generated again every time the form is modified in the
visual editor;
- and finally, the converter converts the original form 10. Conclusion
event code to the Java code which will look almost
the same because of the same API already In this paper we have presented the role of the
implemented additionally into the framework. desktop-to-web converter in the process of conversion
of legacy desktop applications to modern web
8.3 The converted form applications as well as a value of such a tool in
migrating a legacy development team to a web
Fig. 10. is showing the final form in the visual editor. development.
And the same form in action, after some redesign in Results of this research confirm the high relevance
the visual editor, can be seen at Fig. 11. of the automatic conversion and high level web
frameworks for overcoming the complexity of native
web technologies. In order to ensure instant web
development, it is crucial that a converter tool takes
care of all specific characteristics of web architecture.
The automatic conversion has proven to be a
secure way to preserve functionalities of old desktop
applications but only a complete web framework will
allow those applications to be further easily upgraded
and maintained in new environment.

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