JDA (pronounced jay-da) is...

An IdeaIdea...

based on two beliefs. First, by fostering the growth of an ecosystem or a marketplace of reusable components, we humans will become more empowered to innovate. Second, if software can be more easily taken apart and understood, our chances to stand on the shoulders of giants will improve greatly.

A StandardStandard...

put forth based soley on HTML and Javascript to allow for the composition of javascript, HTML and Web services components. The standard strives to specify as little as possible to stay true to the K.I.S.S. principle. The only reason it is based on HTML and Javascript is because it is meant to test the idea using the most popular and readily available technologies.

The design of the standard is meant to lend itself nicely to the ad-hoc copy-paste-and-tweak pattern found in HTML. If all you want to do is reuse componenst built by others, the standard allows you to not have to know Javascript.

A New Way of Building Applications

Ok, it's certainly not the first application of a dataflow architecture. However, most people are not familiar with dataflow architectures, and it needs to be communicated clearly that if you try to do things the old way in the new paradigm, it will feel very awkward and inconvenient. You need to first realize and embrace the fact that the way applications are built using JDA is different from the way it has been traditionally built. Then you need to emerse yourself in the learnng of new design patterns that will not only allow you to take advantage of the dataflow architecture, but also open your eyes to a variety of new ways that will help you achieve your goals without depending on local optimizations.

A Reference Implementation of IDA (Information Devices Architecture)

The technical goal of JDA is to use a set of most widely spread technologies to implement the philosophies behind IDA.