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Ken Webb 2013-11-12T01:01:51Z

The Xholon project explores: software as systems of linked nodes, organized hierarchically. The Xholon toolkit supports this back-to-basics approach, and demonstrates practical benefits through examples from numerous domains.

This wiki provides newer information about Xholon. For additional information, please see the original Xholon site. See especially:

The main development effort (as of mid 2014) is going into the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) version of Xholon. Many of the example apps now run using HTML5, JavaScript, Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), and canvas directly in all modern browsers.

Many sample Xholon applications are available online. Run them using Java Web Start.

The Xholon Collaborative Apps site is up and running, as a WordPress blog.

Contents


What is the rationale for Xholon?

All software has some sort of basic structure, whether intended or accidental.

This structure is best described as a system of linked nodes.

These nodes are organized hierarchically.

If software really is structured this way at a fundamental level, and if software developers were more aware of this structure, then they could use that knowledge to advantage when building software.

The Xholon project and toolkit provide increased awareness of structure by placing nodes, node relationships, and hierarchical organization at the center of the development process, while remaining as unobtrusive as possible. Xholon focuses on these ideas and mines them for all they can give.

This approach enables software to use a large and growing number of related approaches and software, many of which are described or mentioned in this wiki.

The Xholon toolkit

The Xholon toolkit is currently implemented in Java. The basic structure of software (nodes, links between nodes, and hierarchical organization) is typically captured intentionally using XML. The detailed behavior of nodes is expressed using standard Java classes, although several scripting languages can also be used. In a Xholon application, the structure is always accessible in a consistent way when modeling, designing, implementing, simulating, testing, transforming, or running the application.

By adhering to this simple universal structural pattern, Xholon is able to integrate itself with almost any third-party software product or approach to extend its capabilities. The Xholon project currently offers working examples of integration with Java Swing, HTML (Cobra), UML and SysML design tools (MagicDraw, Poseidon, Topcased), SVG-based GUIs (SVG Salamander), the Spring Framework, relational databases through Hibernate/JPA or JDBC, XML databases (exist), sequence diagram editors (sdedit, UMLGraph, Rational Rose), network/graph analysis and visualization software (JUNG, Network Workbench), state machine software (SCXML, SMC, QEP, SwingStates), mind-mapping software (FreeMind), statistics packages (R), charting tools (JFreeChart, gnuplot, Excel, OpenOffice), Ajax frameworks (ZK), MathML, System Biology Markup Language (Copasi), membrane computing, agent-based modeling, J2EE, system dynamics, Matlab Simulink, ordinary differential equations, neural networks (CTRNN), genetic programming (ECJ), cellular automata, XPath, XQuery (Saxon, MXQuery), XSLT, VRML (Cortona), Business Processes (JPDL), JMS, X-bar linguistic theory, and others. This is just some of the software that uses hierarchically-organized linked nodes in some way.

This wiki site

One purpose of this wiki is to present arguments for and against the statements above.

I have just started to work on this wiki. At this point it has no fixed structure, and is just a place to put new content.

topics

This is a list of topics, ordered by the date that the topic was added.

No arbitrary restrictions (NAR)

The syntax of hierarchy

The syntax of hierarchy (table)

Quotes

Xholon application

SwingStates

Community Structure and Detection

Network Workbench

ExTraVis

Spring Framework

FreeMind Mind-mapping software

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)

Licorice

Google Web Toolkit (GWT)

ZK Framework

XMind Mind-mapping software

XML

Xholon Console

XQuery

Java Swing

Topicscape 3D Mind-mapping software

Virtual Reality Modeling Language VRML 3D visualization

Scripts

Design patterns

Services

Templates

Business applications

Hibernate

Validation

JMS

XML databases

MathML

HTML

Reverse engineering from Java to Xholon

YAML

R Project for Statistical Computing

Compilers

Tree comparison

ASM Java bytecode framework

jBPM/jPDL Business process management

Xholon with non-xholon classes

Multiple concurrent applications

Treemapping

Tag clouds

COPASI biochemical network simulator

X-bar linguistic theory

Umple Model-Oriented Programming

Use Case Maps

Ontologies

PlantUML Class and State diagrams

PlantUML Composite Structure diagram

PlantUML Sequence diagram

Scratch programming language and environment

Holonic Systems

Unified Modeling Language (UML) Directly supported in Xholon toolkit, with complete examples in the Xholon download.

Systems Modeling Language (SysML) Directly supported in Xholon toolkit, with complete examples in the Xholon download.

Systems Biology Markup Language (SBML) Directly supported in Xholon toolkit, with complete examples in the Xholon download.

Membrane Computing (P Systems) Directly supported in Xholon toolkit, with complete examples in the Xholon download.

Agent-Based Modeling (ABM) Directly supported in Xholon toolkit, with complete examples in the Xholon download.

NetLogo (turtle graphics, and more) Directly supported in Xholon toolkit, with complete examples in the Xholon download.

Neural Networks (specifically CTRNN) Directly supported in Xholon toolkit, with complete examples in the Xholon download.

Genetic Programming (GP) Directly supported in Xholon toolkit, with complete examples in the Xholon download.

Cellular Automata (CA) Directly supported in Xholon toolkit, with complete examples in the Xholon download.

Brane Calculus Directly supported in Xholon toolkit, with complete examples in the Xholon download.

System Dynamics Directly supported in Xholon toolkit, with complete examples in the Xholon download.

Evolutionary Dynamics

Water Logic

List of other topics topics that don't yet have their own page

Ralf Westphal website

File Formats

Tween Trees

Generalized Blockmodeling

Search Engines

XO Laptop One Laptop per Child

Event-Based Components (EBC)

Model of Cell Mitochondrion

C#

Xholon Collections List, Map, and Set

Event-Based Programming (EBP)

Discrete Event System Specification (DEVS)

OSGi

Parallel Universes and Time Travel

UML and Mind Mapping

Phylogenetic Trees lots of tree visualization software

Online Toolchains

Malleable Software

The Malleable Software Challenge

Actor model

Garbage Collection

UML Class Diagram

Dresden JaMoPP, EMFText, Reuseware, and other projects from TU Dresden

ATLAS Transformation Language (ATL)

Fractal Project

Simple Transformer (SiTra) simple transformations in Java and C#

Prefab reverse engineering from GUI pixels

Model Transformations in Practice Workshop at MoDELS 2005

yUML simple UML diagrams online

Java Swing Variations

JSON can be used in Xholon as an alternative to XML

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

XML Trees and Forests

Internet Media Type MIME Type

Orthogonal Concerns

Java Web Start (JNLP)

Scripting Xholon using JavaScript

Add New Service

Bestiary

Carbon Bathtub a Xholon model of CO2 in the atmosphere

Collaborative Apps with Xholon

Online GUI Design

Drag and Drop

Embedding Xholon nodes in images such as .png files

Java Games

Environments for Learning Java

Games and Education

Cuenca

BrowserJS Script Engine

SVG Web JavaScript Library

jQuery JavaScript Library

jsTree JavaScript Tree Component

HTML5 Canvas

Processing visual programming language

GUI for Xholon grid apps using HTML5 Canvas

Bootstrap minimal environment for developing and running web apps

Xholon webEdition Xholon apps on the web, with or without Java

Bootstrap 2 a smaller and better minimal environment for developing and running web apps

HTModL HyperText Modeling Language, rather than HyperText Markup Language

Microformats

Interplay between Xholon and Wikipedia

Digital Education

Graph Ideas 1

Web App Frameworks as Graph-Based Software

NoSQL Databases

The Azimuth Project Petri Nets, Bigraphs, Climate Models, Connections between modeling approaches

Xholon gwtEdition Xholon models run as HTML5 web apps using Google Web Toolkit (GWT)

Island Game

Math Tales

Contacts

The Xholon project and this wiki are the work of Ken Webb. Ken can be reached at primordion dot com.

Project Logo

The Xholon logo:

I've used a wikitext to HTML converter to help me convert my mediawiki site at SourceForge to this HTML. As of June 2014, SourceForge no longer supports mediawiki wikis.