Google Summer of Code pays college students to spend their summers writing open source code.

This summer has 3 projects that are related to OpenACS.

A Business Rule Management System based on the high-level object oriented scripting language XOTcl
Student: Franz Wirl
Mentor: Gustaf NeumannVienna
University of Economics and Business Administration

Business Rule Engines (BRE) are gaining popularity in complex situations where a high degree of flexibility and declarative problem formulation are important.  In particular, BREs enable the use of declarative programming---"What to do" rather than "How to do it"---which will allow people with limited or no traditional programming experience develop web-based applications.

The goal of this project is to enhance Tcl's capabilities for manipulating mathematical graphs as data structures in programs.  Graphs are useful for describing various real world systems including physical and social networks and modeling constraints (such as scheduling conflicts). Mentor: Matthew M. Burke
George Washington University

This project will enhance the capabilities of creating graphics on the fly using the GD library.  In addition to providing capabilities for low-level drawing (pixel and simple shapes), functionality for creating charts and graphs will be implemented.  Although there are a number of existing programs and libraries for graphing data, one of the biggest advantages of this project will be that the features provided will be tightly integrated with AOLserver's other capabilities.