I

ntroduction
•Traditionally, applications have used flat text files for storage
of configurations specific to a particular user of that program.

• This approach required that the utility reading flat files must
be rather sophisticated.

• This nullified any possibility of sharing of these flat files

with other applications

A new approach to Application-data exchange & its implementation on the Firefox Browser
I
ntroduction (contd…)

Sharing of application-data can achieve its

potential advantages only if all application
programs opt for a standardized mechanism for
storage of these files.

Hence ……… ADX

A new approach to Application-data exchange & its implementation on the Firefox Browser
I
ntroduction (contd..)

• Through ADX (short for Application Data

eXchange) we wish to propose a new XML-
based file format, that can act as a standard
for this purpose.
• We intend to also present a working
demonstration of this new approach in the
popular open source web browser, Firefox.

A new approach to Application-data exchange & its implementation on the Firefox Browser
L iterature Survey (contd…)
Application-Data
• Traditionally, applications have used flat
files for storage of configurations specific
to a particular user of that program
• Application-data can be defined as that data
or information which defines or specifies
the configuration settings of a particular
application.
A new approach to Application-data exchange & its implementation on the Firefox Browser
L iterature Survey (contd…)
Configuration Files
• In computing, configuration files, or config files,
are used to configure the initial settings for some
computer programs.
• The files are often written in ASCII (rarely UTF-
8) and line-oriented, with lines terminated by a
newline or carriage return/line feed pair,
depending on the operating system.

A new approach to Application-data exchange & its implementation on the Firefox Browser
L iterature Survey (contd…)
PHP
• PHP is Open Source Code.
• A scripting language originally designed for
producing dynamic web pages.
• It generally runs on a web server, taking
PHP code as its input and creating web
pages as output

A new approach to Application-data exchange & its implementation on the Firefox Browser
L iterature Survey (contd…)
XML
• The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a
general-purpose specification for creating custom
markup languages.
• XML, in combination with other standards, makes
it possible to define the content of a document
separately from its formatting, making it easy to
reuse that content in other applications or for other
presentation environments.

A new approach to Application-data exchange & its implementation on the Firefox Browser
L iterature Survey (contd…)
XUL
• XUL  was created to make development of the
Mozilla browser easier and faster.
• It is an XML language so all features available to
XML are also available to XUL.
• XUL is a cross platform language designed
specifically for building portable user interfaces.

A new approach to Application-data exchange & its implementation on the Firefox Browser
L iterature Survey (contd…)
JavaScript
• JavaScript is a scripting language widely used for
client-side web development.
• The primary use of JavaScript is to write functions that
are embedded in or included from HTML Document
Object Model (DOM) of the page.
• JavaScript code can run locally in a user's browser
(rather than on a remote server) it can respond to user
actions quickly, making an application feel more
responsive.
A new approach to Application-data exchange & its implementation on the Firefox Browser
L iterature Survey (contd…)
MySQL
• MySQL is a relational database management
system (RDBMS) that runs as a server
providing multi-user access to a number of
databases.
• MySQL is very commonly used in conjunction
with PHP scripts to create powerful and
dynamic server-side applications.

A new approach to Application-data exchange & its implementation on the Firefox Browser
T
he current state of art
Some of the common methods of storing data files are listed
below. None of the systems listed were designed with
portability in mind, and hence only the different storage
strategies adopted are being discussed.
• Unstructured text files:
• For simple applications, this is the standard followed.
These text files often employ their own application specific
format and structure for storing the data.
• Any application that access these files should hence be
sophisticated enough to handle these special structures.

A new approach to Application-data exchange & its implementation on the Firefox Browser
The current state of art
(..cont)
INI File :
• The INI file format is a de facto standard for
configuration files.
• They are commonly associated with Microsoft Windows,
but are also used on other platforms.
• The name "INI file" comes from the filename extension
usually used, ".INI", that stands for "initialization".
• The disadvantage of these files was that they tended to be
scattered all over the system, which made them difficult to
track.

A new approach to Application-data exchange & its implementation on the Firefox Browser
T
he current state of art
(..cont)
Windows Registry :
• When first introduced with Windows 3.1, the Windows
registry's purpose was to tidy up the profusion of per-
program INI files that had previously been used to store
configuration settings for Windows programs.
• It is a database which stores settings and options for
Microsoft Windows operating systems. It contains
information and settings for all the hardware, operating
system software, most non-operating system software, and
per-user settings.
• The registry contains two basic elements: keys and
values.
A new approach to Application-data exchange & its implementation on the Firefox Browser
T he current state of art
(..cont)
Isolated Storage in .NET
• Isolated Storage namespace is a kind of virtual folder that
eliminates the necessity for the developer/user to know
where exactly the configuration file is stored.
• Isolated storage assigns each user of the system an
abstract location called a data compartment — a safe
location on the disk where users, regardless of access level
can safely read and write data.
• The prime hinderant to portability is the fact that the data
itself is stored in different locations for different versions
of Windows, the only operating system on which this
facility is currently available.
A new approach to Application-data exchange & its implementation on the Firefox Browser
The current state of art
(..cont) in Unix-based operating systems
Implementations
• Under Unix and Linux, system-wide configuration files
are traditionally stored in files in /etc/ and its
subdirectories, or sometimes in /usr/local/etc.
• Per-user information is stored in hidden directories and
files (that start with a period) within the user's home
directory.
• IBM's AIX uses an Object Data Manager (ODM)
database to store some system settings, some of which
need to be available at boot time.

A new approach to Application-data exchange & its implementation on the Firefox Browser
P roposal for Dissertation

• ADX – std that help applications to synchronize the

application data btw application instances.

• Instances can be of the same application or a similar

application

• The application - data include user preferences, settings,

and many more depending on the type of application on
which 'ADX' is implemented.

A new approach to Application-data exchange & its implementation on the Firefox Browser
P roposal for Dissertation (…contd)

How it is done
• ADX implemented application will have an ADX file in
which configuration settings are stored
• This file can be stored in a server ,hard disk or any
portable devices and choosing an ADX file will apply the
configuration settings to the application.
• Any modification made to the configuration settings will
be saved in the ADX file.
• If the ADX file is saved in a web browser or a portable
device it can be accessed from other systems also.

A new approach to Application-data exchange & its implementation on the Firefox Browser
P roposal for Dissertation (…contd)

Features & Advantages

• Centralized storage of application-data
• Sharing of application-data between different computers
and applications
• Automatic saving of changes
• Smooth transition from one system/application to another.
• Secure and safe storage of application-data
• Synchronization between different application instances

A new approach to Application-data exchange & its implementation on the Firefox Browser
P roposal for Dissertation (…contd)

The Implementation In Firefox

• ADX implementation in Firefox is an extension that store
the application-data related to Firefox.
• The application-data include – homepage, bookmarks,
history, username and passwords, list of extensions, list of
plug-ins.
• After validating the user, the user's appliclation-data will
be made available in the browser instance he is using.
• The changes made to the application-data will be saved on
the server.

A new approach to Application-data exchange & its implementation on the Firefox Browser
Tentative specification

• In order to define ADX we have to make use

of DTD (Document Type Definition).

• A Document Type Definition (DTD) defines

the legal building blocks of an XML
document. It defines the document structure
with a list of legal elements and attributes.

A new approach to Application-data exchange & its implementation on the Firefox Browser
Technicalities involved
• An web-based interface to get started with.
• An application/extension that is to be installed
on the client systems.
• A secure channel of communication between
the server and the client systems.
• Frequent Synchronization and transfer of data
between the server and client systems via the
application/extension.

A new approach to Application-data exchange & its implementation on the Firefox Browser
 Thank You

A new approach to Application-data exchange & its implementation on the Firefox Browser