Technical info

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Technical Info

Polar Studio – A technical approach

Polar Studio is an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) that helps you to deliver Web Based Business Information Systems at impressing speed. We use 100% internet technology to achieve our goal.
Polar Studio has its own unique concept: Applications are being modelled in the "Polar Studio Application Repository", which is accessable via XML. Modelling ensures uniformity across the whole solution you create. When running the application you created, all HTML is constructed 'on the fly' by our extremely rapid page-generator at server-side.
The Application you created (modelled) is run in an Application Server (Polar Server) which runs on IIS. ALL the webpages (HTML / XML) are generated. No manual HTML coding is neccesary. To start building applications with Polar Studio, developers do not even have to know how to work with HTML! They can simply use our predefined profiles.
On the other hand Polar Studio is an open IDE that allows programmers to enter into the deep at any stage during the development process. By using this two way appoach, we fully support organisations with beginning, moderate and advanced programmers. They can easily work together on larger projects.
Again, we would like to remind you that applications are defined in the "Polar Studio Repository" and that final pages are generated by the Polar Server, so different "styles" of programmers will not lead to an applications with different "look and feel" The look and feel (User Interface) is completely defined by design and really separated from the "Business Logic" and (of course) the "Database"

The concept of Polar Studio, our Web Development IDE

Thanks to Polar Studio, 90% of an average Information System can be modelled. The remaining 10% can easily be added by Server Side Scripting (either in VB-Script or J-Script). Polar Studio fires lots of events, for which event handlers can be written in script. Examples are "OnOpen-event" of a form or "OnUpdate-event" of a Record in the database. Of course you can invoke methods written in other languages like C++ or Visual Basic.

Polar Server, the page-generator that comes with Polar Studio automatically keeps track of security (hackers), performance, specific behaviour of different browsers and multi-user application use. Applications build with Polar Studio automatically are multi-language and have role-based access adopted in its core. Also the Workflow component is very powerfull and can be used without writing code.
The ‘look-and-feel’ of the resulting applications can be modified in several ways (css / xml/xls and standard profiles). Polar Studio Applications are extremely stable due to the fact that all HTML-output is beiing generated upon a page request from the browser.

An application can be realized in about 50% of the time required by the best "alternatives" like IBM WebSphere etc. In comparison to traditional Client/Server C/S development tools the difference is even bigger! There are only a few development Tools that are capable of realizing complete Web Applications. Polar Studio is running up front in comparison with Visual Studio (.NET), Borland (INDY), Magic, Cool:Plex etc..

development in Detail

Polar Studio Applications are beiing defined in an Integrated development Environment (IDE). Polar Studio has its own Web Server for immediate testing purposes at development time. So developers can actually see what they are building, without the need for an installed webserver. This is great news for prototyping and demonstrations on site. Polar Studio has a lot of important Wizards, like:

The Database Synchronization Wizard All Polar Studio Applications are modelled in a database. Polar Studio accepts MS Access-, SQL-Server or Oracle as underlying database. The ‘Synchronization Wizard’ in Polar Studio reads the properties of the data model of the database application in it's own repository. Within the repository of Polar Studio several specific (extra) functionality can be defined for tables, fields, relations, indexes, events et cetera. When specifications of the application database are modified outside of Polar Studio, Polar Studio can simply synchronize with these changes through the ‘Synchronization Wizard’. New fields, tables, relations, indexes et cetera will be added to the repository. Deleted ones can be deleted from the Polar Studio Project or kept, depending on your decision. This way the repository of the Polar Studio Project will remain synchronized with the underlaying application database, while specific extra functionality, defined within Polar Studio, will remain intact!

The Menu Wizard The Menu Wizard helps you with adding entry points to the menu. The wizard shows a list of database tables that are not yet used in the menu. These entry points can be added quickly. The Wizard will place the items at logical places. The final places can easily be overruled by the developer(s).

The Messages Wizard Text and textparts are stored in data aswell, so they can be used througout the application, but always will remain consistent. The 'Messages Wizard' takes care of the multi-language approach. .

Code Completion In the code-modules of Polar Studio, code completion now helps you to fast and accuratly enter code. Code-completion helps to select the properties and methods of the Polar Studio objects, displays short help for those properties and methods and helps to enter the parameters for methods. Code-completion not only support the Polar Studio object, but the developer can add custom libraries to be supported with code-completion.

The Form Designer With the Form Designer, you can position and size the controls in your forms. These controls can be bound to fields in the database or unbound. You can also alter all properties of these controls. In the form-designer, it is easy to add controls. A wizard will help you to add controls as tab-sheets, Fixed HTML-areas, custom drop-downs, etc.

The Workflow component The Workflow component is another powerfull feature. The workflow scheme can be fully addapted to your business needs. The result is graphically shown. In order to implement workflow features in your applications, you don't need to write a single line of code. All workflow-dependend permissions, and actions can be defined from within the IDE. Even tracking-and-tracing is a standard feature of PolarStudio.

Highly Qualified and Unified Applications are a result of working with Polar Studio

Polar Studio's target is beiing the IDE that offers the best way to create High Quality, unified Business Applications. Polar Studio Applications have high security built in. The Applications resulting from Polar Studio are all role-based, so the applications can be used by different groups of people. Every group can have it's own rights to tables, fields and edit properties. The Business Processes are beiing modelled with the help of visual Workflow management and Design.

Polar Server keeps track of tablesizes and optimally uses navigation possibilities of browser-technology. This way, even at low bandwidth access (like modem/isdn), Polar Server Applications can be run.

Security: Database Access is only at Server Side. Users of the applications need to login into the system before they can access it. Besides a (low level) secure login name and password, login calculators (token-generators) can be used. Furthermore is is possible to implement your own 'autorisation mechanisms', based on your own back-office systems. Guest Access can be realized aswell.

With Polar Studio it is very easy to store files (like Word or Excell, Power Point et cetera) in the database, using BLOB fields or OLE-object fields. The files can be uploaded from the browser. Pictures can be shown in the web pages directly. With polar Studio it will be 'a piece of cake' to keep track of your company documents from everywhere.

Technical Demands

A Polar Studio Application resides on a Microsoft Webserver, using Microsoft (or open) standards. On the Webserver (IIS) the Polar Server (page generator) is active. All data is stored in a (local or remote) relational database management system, like SQL Server, Access or Oracle. Users get access to the applications through a standard webbrowser (Netscape /Internet Explorer or similar). Because the application resides centrally on the server, updates are easily realized.

Per server - depending on the application and used hardware - 250 to 1000 users can work together in a single application! This means that large information systems can be realized with polar Studio.

To help any developer with a quick start, Polar Studio comes with over 200 pages of documentation. You will also receive examples of real life applications.