{"id":712,"date":"2014-07-31T00:01:06","date_gmt":"2014-07-31T07:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dojotoolkit.org\/blog\/?p=712"},"modified":"2023-03-11T08:13:40","modified_gmt":"2023-03-11T16:13:40","slug":"case-study-hpcc-systems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dojotoolkit.org\/blog\/case-study-hpcc-systems","title":{"rendered":"Case study: HPCC Systems"},"content":{"rendered":"

The large companies that use Dojo are widely known. This series features lesser known users of Dojo, and their stories. This time, we interview Gordon Smith from HPCC Systems<\/a>, a subsidiary of LexisNexis RISK Solutions<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Q: How did you first learn about Dojo?<\/h2>\n

A: Through Google \/ Stack Overflow. I suspect my “discovery” of Dojo was a bit different to the norm, as prior to 2013 I had never really done any Web Development. Up until then I was predominantly a C++ Developer, some Java and a smattering of C#. Initially I wanted to knock together a single page proof of concept, consisting of a code editor (CodeMirror<\/a>), a result view (HTML Table) and an “activity graph” (ActiveX Control) and wanted something that would handle the layout, resizing and ideally something with splitters – after a few searches online I found the Border Container Docs and away I went! Shortly after, I added a Tab Container and switched to using the basic Grid. <\/p>\n

\"ECL
ECL Playground \u2013 How the original POC Looks today<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

<\/p>\n

Q: Why did you choose Dojo?<\/h2>\n

A: After the initial success of the proof of concept, we took stock of our existing web application and decided that a rewrite would be in order, at this stage I did stop and take a longer look at what was available and quickly came to the conclusion that it would be jQuery or Dojo. Dojo won out for a number of reasons, chief of which was how the core libraries had been architected, as well as their attention to “core” details, like AMD, OOP, localization and accessibility. I was also satisfied that we could use Dijit for the App layout and common widgets, while being able to drop in any other “best of breed” page elements as needed.<\/p>\n

Q: Were you previously using another toolkit?<\/h2>\n

A: We had been using XSLT to generate our pages and a small amount of YUI for some of the newer work.<\/p>\n

\"EPC
Before<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"EPC
After<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Q: What does your application or service do?<\/h2>\n

A: The HPCC Platform (High Performance Computing Cluster) is a massive parallel-processing computing platform that solves Big Data problems. It has been in development for more than thirteen years and was open sourced just over three years ago now. We call the web application “ECL Watch” (ECL is our declarative data processing language), and it allows the user to:<\/p>\n