Building a database design laboratory on the Internet

Commercial tools for software engineering include many development environments to support the design process. These integrated tools are usually distributed through traditional retail channels, with vendors increasingly giving customers the option of downloading products from the Web. The tools are installed on user client machines and are usually duplicated for actual tool use at customer sites. Users are responsible for installation, maintenance and upgrade procedures. We developed Web Lab as part of a project sponsored by the European Commission to advance rule-based, object-oriented technologies for developing database applications. The Web Lab was designed to help disseminate the research results. It enables remote use of a design environment for database applications, including a repository for application development that provides a protected workspace. However, as software becomes more and more a commodity, we expect vendors to begin selling software use rather than tools, an option that is particularly attractive in the context of thin clients running on network computers. Web Lab demonstrates the feasibility of this idea for commercial software distribution. We describe the Web Lab project, its implementation, and plans for further development.