Transparent multi-client access and dynamic content generation

Abstract

The proliferation of mobile devices has created the need for content delivery tailored to capabilities of the device used. This content adaptation has to be invisible to the end user. Our goal was to find a solution that would enable this adaptation for a hierarchical data structure that is changing very frequently. This means the content has to be created dynamically. In this paper we propose a solution for dynamic content generation and transparent multi-client access. Clients send requests that contain parameters, and headers that describe them and the content they want to receive. The solution for content generation comprises: a request handler that processes the request and parameters so that content based on them can be generated, a data service that delivers the data needed for content generation, a content transformer that transforms the provided data to the format that is expected by the client in the response, and a response generator that generates a response that contains the requested content. Transparent access is provided using the user-agent header field sent in the client request. We explain the architecture of solution and the general content generation process. Implementation of the proposed solution is demonstrated in a case study involving visualization of GRID monitoring data.