Ajaqs 1.1.6.2 review

Ajaqs is a Web app that organizes FAQs on a per-project basis

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: kodeCharlie

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Ajaqs is a Web app that organizes FAQs on a per-project basis. Ajaqs projects is designed to be deployed under popular Web and application servers.

It aims to serve two purposes: to provide engineering groups a mechanism for consolidating and preserving in-house knowledge in connection to product development and usage, and to provide small companies with a Web interface for exposing searchable, internationalizable information related to products and services.

Here are some key features of "Ajaqs":
Serves up XHTML 1.0 (Transitional).
Internationalizable front-end.
Text-only front-end.
Templatized front-end.
Customizable styles using stylesheets.
Back-end independent of database-vendor.
Pooling of database connections for reuse.
Can attach text or image to answers.
Can associate several FAQs with a single project.
Searchable FAQs.
Role-based security access.
Administrative front-end for editing or deleting users, projects, FAQs, questions, answers, and attachments.

Here are some key advantages of using Ajaqs:

Flexibility. The end-user should be able to use any major commercial (or open-source) database on the market. Moreover, the end-user should be able to customize the look-and-feel of the front-end; this includes the ability to internationalize the application.

Maintenance. Both external documentation (like this) and inline javadocs should explain how things work. I've tried to write clean Java code so that developers who build on Ajaqs will have a clear, easily extensible starting point.

Ease of Use. Installation is simple; you just have to create a .war file and drop it in the right directory/folder. The Ajaqs interface is text-based, and intended to provide easy access to search operations.

Security. File system security issues are completely off-loaded to the Java security model (i.e., the Java sandbox) and whatever access-policy may be in place for the database. Ajaqs-specific security in connection with particular web content is off-loaded to the security model for the application server under use. Ajaqs-specific security that deals with end-users is role-based, and leverages Castor's JDO mapping model to restrict, automatically, what data from the back-end some end-user can access.

Here are some disadvantages of using Ajaqs:

Castor. Although this is a big design advantage, in practice it poses occasional problems, partly because of sketchy documentation.
Non-trivial design. Ajaqs may be powerful, but it comes at a great price. As the list of technologies above indicates, it takes a well-versed Java developer to understand all the issues involved in making Ajaqs work properly.

What's New in This Release:
The Ant build process now utilizes Jasper to pre-compile JSPs into the war file.