No. WebRB is a "software service." Designing WebRB applications requires only a standard Firefox Version 1.5 browser. Your assembled WebRB applications can be executed in any modern browser.
The WebRB Developers Manual discusses the capabilities provided by the WebRB service. The WebRB visual editor is explained in detail, showing how developers can administer their WebRB account and discussing the underlying WebRB framework and run-time environment.
Assembling WebRB Applications: An Example-Based Walk-through discusses a set of WebRB examples that developers can import into their account as a "starter kit." The examples illustrate WebRB's features and are small enough to encourage experimentation by developers who want to get a quick look at WebRB.
WebRB: a Language and Runtime For Multi-Page Relational Web-Applications is a submitted conference paper (still under review) that discusses the WebRB system.
WebRB: A Different Way To Write Web Applications, by Avraham Leff and James T. Rayfield, has been published in IEEE Internet Computing (Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 52-61, May-June, 2008). (The Research Report version of the paper is also still available.)
Relational Blocks: Declarative Visual Assembly of Enterprise Applications describes an older, Java-based version of WebRB, but it provides a useful discussion of the context and motivation for the WebRB approach to building applications.
This version of WebRB provides a bare-bones, end-to-end implementation to support the relational-block way of building applications. The set of model blocks support the basic "CRUD" operations. Most algebra blocks are missing; only a subset of the HTML elements are supported; and, for the supported HTML elements, only a limited number of properties and events are suppored. We plan to enhance WebRB in these areas as well as in error handling and data type support. We expect to prioritize the list of WebRB enhancements based on the feedback we receive from WebRB users.
Please send email to webrb@us.ibm.com. Include the XML for the pages that cause the problem, and include any necessary table definitions (table names and column names).
