The purpose of the Webinos project is to define and deliver an Open Source platform, which will enable web applications and services to be used and shared consistently and securely over a broad spectrum of connected devices.
To achieve this, it is insufficient to limit the specification to APIs to be provided by individual devices to allow access to device resources, but it is also necessary to define and provide an architecture and infrastructure to allow applications to run not only on a single device, but also across devices and domains.
Increasingly users own more connected devices and users are no longer satisfied to handle devices and applications on an individual basis, but expect applications to keep preferences and status information synchronized across multiple domains, devices and, if appropriate, applications.
This applies to device features as well. Already many modern TV sets allow the use of smart phones as input devices, though this is currently handled on a proprietary manner. A modern web based platform needs to define and provide functionality to handle such interactions in consistent and, for the application programmer, easily accessible manner.
Other issues that require services that go beyond the capability of individual devices are the handling of user authentication, cross device events, metrics and application distribution.
In all these cases, it is not sufficient to provide a simple device API, but it is also required to describe the underlying architecture and service requirements.
The tagline of the webinos project is "Secure Web Operating System Application Delivery Environment", indicating that security is a significant part of the project. In the specification part of the project, the handling of security and privacy aspects and the creation and definition of a security architecture was covered by an individual project task to ensure that the topic is handled adequately.
To cover all areas adequately, the webinos specification consists of three parts:
(The numbering is an artifact of the webinos project plan. There are no missing 3.3 and 3.4 deliverables - the numbers are reserved for an update of the 3.1 and 3.2 deliverables in phase II of the webinos project.)
The first deliverable (which is this one, .i.e. D03.1) covers the architecture and required infrastructure and service components. The intended audience for this deliverable are providers of the webinos platform, since they will need to provide these components. For application programmers the background sections may be of interest to get an overview of these components and their interactions, since a good understanding of the framework may allow for more efficient use of the system, though an in-depth knowledge of the internal interfaces and structures is not that useful. This is also one of the reasons to have the background section of this document separate from the detailed specification section.
The second deliverable (i.e. D03.2) describes the APIs that will be available to an web application programmer on a webinos device. The intended audience are application programmers who want to provide webinos enabled and supported applications and are going to use the APIs. In the implementation phase of the platform, the audience, of course, also includes the platform providers, who will provide the APIs.
The third deliverable (i.e. D03.5) describes the security framework for webinos. As security needs to encompass the full application environment, this covers web security architecture and services as well on-device security and policy handling.
All three deliverables together comprise the initial webinos system specification, which will serve as basis for the development of the open source platform.
Based on the experiences with implementing and using webinos, an updated versions of these deliverables will be published in August 2012.