DataView is a universally applicable client-server development environment. It integrates all tools and procedures which a developer requires in order to create complex, application-wide client-server applications. DataView development and the resulting applications are characterized by the following features.
DataView and DataView applications can be integrated in heterogeneous system environments using a multilevel client-server concept. The strict separation of database server, database application server and Java Clients allows scalable solutions for ten to more than simultaneously working users.
DataView supports the following operating systems and platforms:.
All information which describe the application (metadata), such as model objects (entities, relations...) or interaction objects on the user interface (masks, buttons, menus...) are kept together with the corresponding properties and the corresponding functionality in the central repository. It is stored in the connected database. The objects are database entries and not hard-coded in the form of lines of program code. They can be classified, localized and reused.
DataView manages its own software components (system data) as well as the components of the created applications (meta data) in the repository. This allows a comfortable metadata management across all levels of the application development.
All elements of an application are interactively created using the DataView system masks. In doing so the objects of the real enterprise environment and their interconnections, such as projects, items, customers, employees etc. are in the focus of each DataView application. Your real-life model becomes the entity relationship model. It automatically contains all required procedures to secure referential integrity and to guarantee an efficient processing of user data in connection with relational databases. Once the data model has been created in DataView, you generate the interaction objects such as lists, forms, fields, buttons or menus.
The application-specific functionality and the dialog flow are installed with the help of the event-controlled standard function components (userexits) at object-triggers. The programming interface of DataView provides some 0 frequently used functions. More complex functionality can be programmed in C or LogiView. LogiView has the advantage that components created with it as well as application objects are release-capable and platform-independent, because they can be managed in the repository of the database.
Developers and end-users have an identical user interface in DataView. As a developer you can simultaneously display the DataView development tools and any interaction objects of the application itself on the screen. you switch between both levels as needed. This tool-in-tool environment optimizes the development process, especially during rapid prototyping, when creating on-line layouts and during functional checks. Application administrators in the target enterprise have the possibility to change system settings or to check them without having to leave the application.
With the help of an integrated user and privilege management DataView guarantees the security of meta data and user data. By creating users, groups and profiles as well as by defining access privileges for individual objects or records you can install hierarchical structures for development, maintenance and usage of the application. Each record of the DataView application carries a mode-dependent security key, which you activate by assigning privileges for users and groups according to the owner-group-words scheme. By assigning manager privileges you can additionally grant access privileges on selected system data to system managers, separated for development and application levels. Thus the customizing of the application in the target enterprise by qualified application managers is possible without putting the fundamental objects and stability of the total application at risk.
All data stock of the DataView application is universally portable. With the DataView loader you can transfer both the meta data of an application as well as any user data from a source system to a target system. The exchange medium is the loader file (ASCII or binary). Via different modes during export and import you secure the consistency of the data stock to be transported regarding internal references. The loader concept allows a distributed development of applications, their combination, system updates, the integration of foreign non-conform data stock in DataView applications as well as changing from one database system to another one. Thus, any delivered DataView applications can grow with the technological development in the target enterprise.
As standard interfaces for the data exchange DDE and RDE are offered.
For the co-operation with Microsoft Office products DataView is fully OLE-capable.
various and additional possibility to provide DataView objects to other applications using the VDO-interface (Virtual Distributed Objects). one example for such an application is the graphical browser for displaying the structure of meta data and user data, which is integrated in the DataView-toolset. VDO also provides DataView objects as Active-X objects, so that Internet clients can be used instead of Intranet clients.