AppCentral Development Environment

AppCentral Benefits

• Migration Tool - The AppCentral framework supports hosting of native Windows Applets as well as Microsoft .NET framework Applets in a common AppCentral Application. This allows existing investment in Windows C/C++ applications to be retained whilst new code is developed using the powerful .NET framework. More importantly, the applications developed using both types of technologies can be deployed together, making it seamless for the end user.
  
• Enforces Design Patterns – The AppCentral Framework implements the Model, View Controller (MVC) design pattern. It also ensures that the components are developed as re-usable components by providing the framework and the base classes for doing so. This results in software components that are re-usable.
  
• Service Oriented Architecture Enablement – AppCentral provides a composite framework within which multiple applications (Applets) and services can be aggregated, to form one or more business process. In other words, AppCentral provides a framework for orchestrating business process that span, multiple business services.
  
• Distributed Development – The development of the individual Applets can be completely independent of other Applets and the development can be distributed across multiple development teams. The Applets developed by individual developers or teams can be combined in to a single application through the application configuration process.
  
• Ease of Deployment – AppCentral developed applications can be deployed in stages, and managed centrally. Once the AppCentral framework is deployed (for the first application), deploying the subsequent application can be as simple as deploying the Applets to a central server. Refer deployment architecture for further details.
  
• Composite Applications – Today’s complex business processes and the underlying requirements often require multiple applications that perform specific, well-defined functions to be combined / integrated in to a composite application, thus providing the user with an integrated environment for completing the business tasks. AppCentral provides a common container / environment for hosting multiple (new and existing) applications.
  
• Single Sign-On – The AppCentral Shell controls access to each of the Applets by ensuring that the user is authenticated and authorized to access the Applet functionality. This ensures that a single set of authentication and authorization credentials can be used to access multiple Applets.
  

Platform Support

Architecture Overview

• Responsive and Rich Interactive Experience – through the utilization of multiple-view architecture that leverages Windows Forms and the associated user interface controls
  
• Intelligent Connectivity to Distributed Data Sources – through an extensible range of Data Adapters that can be used to access distributed data sources.
  

Figure 2-1: AppCentral Composite Application Architecture

• Presentation Tier – The presentation tier consists of a combination of shared and non-shared (applet specific) components. The Shell and Control view components consist of the Menus, Toolbars and a Shortcuts bar used for navigation between the Applets.
  
  Orchestration Tier – The orchestration tier (also known as the business process tier) represents the Controller components of the MVC architecture. The Applet objects provide the controllers. The shared components of this tier provide the inter-applet integration between multiple applets.
  
  Data Tier – The data tier represents the Model or data components of the MVC architecture. This tier consists of an extensible set of data adapters that can be used to access a range of distributed data sources using a consistent API.
  

• Content View – used for displaying mostly static content for the purpose of navigation. For example, this view can be used to display a list or a tree view of contents for navigation purposes.
  
• Result View – used to typically display results of user operations. For example, drilling down on contents displayed in the content view may cause a query to be executed against a remote data source. The results of this query can be displayed in the Result View. The Result View is typically represented as a list or a table.
  
• Detail View – the results displayed in the Result View typically represents summary information. The detail result objects are displayed and manipulated within the Detail View.
  

Figure 2-2: AppCentral Shell Architecture

In addition to the Views described above, the Shell also provides the Menu, Toolbars and a Shortcuts Bar. The Menus and Toolbars are used to control Applet actions and are context sensitive. The Shortcuts bar is used for navigation between Applets hosted within the Shell.