AribaWeb Release History

AribaWeb has been a commercially deployed component of Ariba, Inc's network services (e.g. Ariba Supplier Network, Ariba Discovery) and On Demand Spend Management application suite since late 1999. The framework evolved steadily in dozens of releases over that time, and was first released as Open Source in May 2008.

Below is a brief history of the major releases of the framework:

AribaWeb 5

The first Open Source release of AribaWeb. Initially released in beta form in May 1999, AW5 was the first release packaged for external consumption. Major enhancements included:

• Ant build system

• Zero configuration initialization (jar scanning based resource registration)

• MetaUI and MetaDB frameworks (Ariba has employed a related metadata-driven UI framework, called "fieldsui", since 1999, but MetaUI is a new design).

AribaWeb 4

AribaWeb 4 premiered as part of Ariba's next generation On Demand applications in 2006. Key new capabilities included:

• Cross-page Incremental Refresh (Incremental refresh was now employed for essentially all responses, even those crossing server page boundaries)

• PivotTables (multi-dimensional data display)

• Client-side modal panels

• Enhanced validation error display and navigation

• AWPoll (simulated push) support

• RichText editor integration

• Component Inspector

AribaWeb 3

First released as part of Ariba Analysis in 2003, AW 3 included major steps forward in client-side richness, including:

• Drag and drop support

• Scrolling Data Tables (with incremental data fetching)

• Outline trees (and tables)

• Pervasive refresh regions (all requests were JavaScript-based and could result in incremental page updates)

• LazyDiv (lazy fetching popup menus)

AribaWeb 2

Released as part of Sourcing 4.0 (and later Buyer 8.0), AW 2.0 was the first release to include formally packaged "widgets" (and wizard) frameworks. New capabilities included:

• Many widgets: TabSet, PopupMenu, TextButton, Section

• Wizard framework (and ActionInterceptor model)

• Branding framework (including custom page wrappers session-scoped resource managers)

• Support for subtemplates (inner components)

AribaWeb 1

First commercially deployed in October 1999 as part of the AribaNetwork 13 release, and subsequently in ANME (then IBX) and Ariba Buyer 7.0 releases, AW 1.0 included:

• Full component framework, including stateful and stateless components

• Initial "refresh region" (auto AJAX) support for incrementally refreshing portions of a DOM in response to specifically flagged action elements.

• Proper back-button support (via server-maintained page history)