Key Concepts

Applipress is designed as a system for generating applications based on a model-driven approach. This approach is fundamental to the platform, emphasizing the importance of models consisting of entities, enumerations, and forms. By standardizing these elements, Applipress facilitates automated and accelerated operations, significantly reducing development time when standardized elements are employed. The creation of the final application becomes much faster since certain forms imply the existence of specific fields in the entities they operate upon.

The degree of standardization determines the system's flexibility. Within Applipress, efforts have been made to standardize elements at various levels, providing a balance between automation and customization.

Standardized Entities

Applipress introduces several levels of entity standardization:

Lookup: Ideal for entities used as lookup tables, such as customer or product lists. It typically includes fields like code, name, description, seq, status, validFrom, and validTo. These fields provide a descriptive outline and manage sorting (beyond alphabetical or primary key sorting), status tracking (active or inactive), and temporal validity of records.
Entity with Status: Designed for entities that require status tracking and temporal activity markers. It includes status, validFrom, and validTo fields.
Hierarchy: Enables self-referencing hierarchical structures within an entity, similar to the Lookup entity but with an additional parent field for establishing hierarchies.
Master-detail: Defines two interconnected entities, such as Invoice and InvoiceItem, where the master entity holds general data and the detail entity contains items related to the master entity.
Network Structure: Creates a complex structure of four interconnected entities (Node, NodeType, NodeRelType, NodeRel) to facilitate detailed relational and hierarchical data representation within a networked context.
Empty Entity: A blank entity with no fields or relationships, useful for creating entirely custom entities.

Forms and Their Standard Elements

Forms in Applipress also adhere to a level of standardization, consisting of Simple or Composite elements:

Simple Elements: Include layout-defining elements (e.g., Column, Rows, Panel, Accordion, Tabs, Top tabs, Horizontal Splitter, Vertical Splitter) and data display elements (e.g., Table, Form, Form with status, Wizard form).
Composite Forms: These are predefined combinations of simple elements, allowing for rapid form creation. Examples include Table+accordion+form, Table+accordion+form+lifecycle, and variants involving Tabs and Lifecycle components. These composite forms are tailored for displaying data from single or related entities, enhancing user interaction and data presentation.

Last modified: 18 March 2024