Jocelyn Ireson-Paine
Department of Experimental Psychology, Oxford University,
Institute for Fiscal Studies, London,
and
KB7
April 1997, revised May 1997
TextField
and OnSubmit
. The WOM compiler translates these
into Object Rexx class definitions which can be instantiated and run by
a server. Each class has a special method which knows how to send back
its HTML representation to the server. The way pages interact with each
other and update themselves is controlled by Object Rexx code inserts.
WOM has been used by the Institute for Fiscal Studies to connect interactive economic models to the Web. It is based on the new programming paradigm of System Limit Programming (SLP). WOM takes care of common Web programming problems such as maintaining multiple sessions and saving state on the server. It proved extremely useful for prototyping an economics teaching application named Tow, probably making prototyping about ten times faster than with normal CGI programming.