Every industry has “planned obsolescence” and the software industry is no exception. Business applications age quickly. Every few years, the look and feel of computer operating environments takes a leap forward. This causes a ripple effect as software development tools and the applications previously created by them for older operating systems lag behind the new capabilities and begin to seem old and tired to users who learn to expect the new look and feel.
But the user experience in a software application is established by more than just graphical look and feel issues. The end user experience is also highly dependent on deployment mode, interactivity, multiple users and the fundamental transactional capabilities of the system.
The end user experience is bound by time and place: where are you when use the application, how are you connected, are there other simultaneous users? Your options for time and place are determined by your deployment mode. The uniPaaS application platform allows for several deployment modes including desktop, client-server, browser-client, Web, RIA and Mobile.
uniPaaS Applications are capable of delivering highly effective and satisfying user experiences:
Fully Functional Business Applications.
A uniPaaS application is ready for business. Applications are designed to give users all the basic capabilities they expect and need when using an application based on their user profile.
Create – Add a new record.
Read – Read and view any record.
Update – Modify any field or record.
Delete – Ability to delete an entire record.
Zoom – Drill down from any field to related data views.
Easy User Generated Reports.
Design your own reports
Load reports created by other users
Duplicate reports and then modify them
Run , View and Print reports at any time.
Fast, Highly Responsive Applications.
Event-driven architecture for interactive user experience.
Scalable across multiple servers
Native database gateways
High speed transport layers over the Internet for faster response.
Ability to run server side of applications on high performance operating systems such as IBM i, AIX, HPUX, Solaris and Linux.
Multi-threaded and partitioned architecture for faster processing of unlimited multiple concurrent users.
Connected to the outside world through secure Web Services and other approaches to interoperability.
End User Expression Editor.
Can you imagine what it would be like if you had to call a programmer every time you wanted to change one of the business rules used by your application? With uniPaaS, an end-user can be authorized to zoom into an expression from a range field and then edit functions and variables themselves by accessing them from the pulldown and context menus. The function types available to end users are: Numeric, String, Basic, Date and Time and Variables (except the VarSet function).
Browser Client Applications.
One type of application in uniPaaS is called the browser-client application. This means that the software application is running inside the browser but is not based on standard coding of the World Wide Web (called HTML). Frequently used tables can be cached on the Client side.
Windows Style and Controls.
Windows look and feel with new uniPaaS controls
Tab Control, Radio button, Check box
Rich support of graphical user interface (GUI) properties
Windows themes settings are reflected in uniPaaS windows.
Enhanced GUI Controls.
Tables
Hot Tracking, column reordering, frozen columns, context menus per column, persistent data.
Check Boxes and Radio Buttons
Multi lines, jointed, images radio buttons, 3 states
Tab Controls
Multi lines, images in tabs
Tabbing order for the cursor is independent of the declaration of variables.
Every window can remember the modifications made by the user (change size, position, column order, etc.)
Enhanced Windows Controls (Tab, Radio Buttons, Push Buttons).
Multi Display Interface/Single Display Interface.
Parallel execution of tasks can be displayed as a regular MDI child window or as a whole new SDI window
Each concurrent context can keep its own transaction
Concurrent tasks can interact with each other
Menu.
New menu structure; any menu can be pull down or pop up.
Enable\disable sub menus on the fly.
Status Bar.
Construct your own status bar
Manipulate each panel
Hide\show the status bar dynamically
Keep Status bar state per context.
Rich Internet Applications (RIA).
Accessible from anywhere
Browser-free
Rich level of interactivity and design
Superb performance
Extremely Secure
Easier and Less Costly to Deploy New Versions.
Handheld Applications for Windows Mobile.
Same advantages as RIA
Can be used on small form factor Mobile devices.
Rich .NET Controls.
uniPaaS Can Now Use any Microsoft .NET Assembly (easily available building blocks)
Much easier than programming with MSFT tools
Secure User Experience.
A uniPaaS application identifies each user through advanced industry-standard security methods and allocates access to only those sections of the software where the user has been authorized by the administrator. Users are assured of a secure computing experience through the use of programming approaches such as secure Web Services, Secure FTP, HTTPS, SSL, advanced data encryption and multiple other measures.
Rock Solid and Reliable Business Applications.
High degree of operational integrity.
Full support for transaction types.
Excellent error recovery and error messaging capabilities.
See the uniPaaS RIA demonstration application here.
