Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
a desktop IDE. Also, today, different people across the globe are involved in the same
projects. So, new capabilities of sharing and collaboration are required.
All these requirements can be fulfilled with the help of an online IDE. An online
IDE which can also be called a browser based IDE is an online coding environment
that allows users from across the globe to access and use this software as a service.
This software can be accessed from devices like smart phones, desktops, laptops, etc.
that have the ability to access the Internet and have a web browser.
These browser based IDEs can be hosted on a cloud or as a normal web hosting. In
this paper, we present the idea of a browser based IDE on the cloud. The main reason
for choosing cloud hosting over client-server architecture are the advantages of cloud
hosting like virtually limitless computing power, scalability, risk protection etc. In the
classic hosting, there will be only a single physical machine and all the servers, etc.
will have to be leased out or bought in advance. But, with cloud computing, there is
no large initial investment like in the traditional method and one has to pay only as
per his usage.
The users may want to share their projects with their peers and may also want to
work on certain modules simultaneously. This can be achieved by the feature of real
time collaboration that will be provided by this IDE.
Also, when the developer faces with certain problems during implementation, he
may find the need to ask other programmers for help to solve his problems. This need
can be catered to by having an integrated forum in the IDE. This will help the
developers to obtain answers to their queries.
Some developers may want to share their technical knowledge so that it can be of
help to the other developers. For example, a developer might have found out a more
efficient way of doing a certain task and may want to share this knowledge with other
developers. He will be able to do so conveniently with the help of technical blogs.
In this paper, we present the idea of browser based IDE on the cloud that will have
an integrated forum to assist the developers and will also allow the developers to
write technical blogs to share knowledge as well as to make certain new findings
known to others.
1.1
Cloud Computing
Cloud computing is an Internet based computing which aims at providing hardware
and software resources. It enables the users to access and share information from
devices like laptops, desktops, smart phones, etc. which have ability to connect to the
Internet. Cloud computing caters to dynamism, abstraction and resource sharing [1].
Dynamism deals with the fluctuating demands based on seasonal traffic burst,
world or regional economy, etc. Abstraction allows developers to concentrate on core
competencies and eliminate the need to worry about operating system, software
platform, web security, updates, etc. Resource sharing provides flexibility to share
applications and also other network resources like hardware.
Cloud computing allows users from all around the world to access the applications
without having to download or install them on their own machines. It can provide
virtually unlimited storage as opposed to local servers or hard drives. It provides three
major types of services- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service
(PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS).
