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Frequently asked questions

  1. How do you develop systems?
    We use kinodb, an application development environment that we have spent the last few years developing and using.   It's an immensely powerful and flexible tool for developing complex, large-scale applications for deployment to hundreds or thousands of users.
     
  2. What are the advantages?
    •     Speed
      kinodb is used to define a model of the application in terms of its data, user interface, workflows, reports and functional behaviour.
    •     Flexibility
      kinodb isn't tied to any particular type of business or application.  We've used it to produce asset registers, corporate directories, repositories for the storage of corporate marketing information, statistical analysis tools, cost estimation suites, corporate metric reporting systems and many other applications.
    •     Scaleabilty
      Applications are inherently scaleable in terms of complexity, data sizes and numbers of users.  We have ERP-like applications with thousands of tables, tens of gigabytes of data and hundreds of concurrent users.
    •     Maintainability
      Because the entire application is defined in data, rather than code, all dependencies within the application can be interrogated and reported on.  This means that assessing the impact of any change is easy, and auditing the scope and effect of a maintenance change is an integral part of the development process.
  3. Doesn't this tie us in to your technology?
    No.  A kinodb application employs a standard Oracle database schema that will be familiar to any database developer.  If for any reason you want to use conventional development tools to access or manipulate application data, this is done in the same way as for any other Oracle database.  Although kinodb's built-in reporting functionality allows greater productivity and tighter integration with the application as a whole, we have customers who use Business Objects and Cognos to report on data held in kinodb applications.
     
  4. What's the development process?
    Whilst we can work to any corporate development methodology, kinodb lends itself particularly well to an iterative development process.  Given the choice, we will work with a small group of users with a detailed knowledge of the requirements and successively build functionality in a series of timeboxed phases.  This reduces timescales, ensures user involvement and buy-in and removes the risk of surprises when the application is delivered.
     
  5. What technology is used?
    An Oracle database contains both the application's data and the definition of the application itself.  The application definition ('metadata') is turned into an application by the kinodb application server.  This is a standard Java application running in a servlet container (Apache Tomcat, which is the reference implementation of a servlet container) that reads the application definition from the database and serves this application to the users.  Both the database and application server can run happily on a wide variety of platforms - we have users on platforms including Windows Server, Solaris, IBM AIX and various flavours of Linux.
     
  6. What type / size of servers will we need?
    This clearly depends on the nature and scale of the application.  Generally however we recommend the use of Intel-based servers as the most cost-effective option.  A typical application with perhaps 150 users will generally run happily on a low-end twin-processor system hosting both the database and application server.  For larger installations we would recommend using separate servers for the application server and the database, however this really does depend on a number of variables.  Note that either or both of the servers may be virtualised if required.
     
  7. How about integration with other systems?
    Oracle provides a number of options for integration, including XML and table-based data transfer. A kinodb application can publish views onto application data, allowing the encapsulation of complexity behind a simple interface.  kinodb also supports SOAP-based XML data requests.  As application data is stored in a conventional relational model, external reporting and ETL tools can easily access it.  Where appropriate, our pre-packaged applications such as Investment Manager include data load functionality and configurable, standard interfaces to enterprise applications like SAP.  Where specialised interface functionality is required, we can build this to your specification.

  8. Sounds great - what does it cost?
    Obviously the cost of development depends on the complexity of the application, but the productivity of the tool means that development timescales and costs are accordingly decreased.  The kinodb runtime environment is licensed per user, per annum.  The cost per user is on a sliding scale, so that additional users cost successively less.  The license fee includes support and upgrades to the environment as these are released.  Please contact us for more information.
     
  9. Aren't Oracle licences very expensive?
    Oracle is available in a number of editions that allow licensing to be based on the number of users or the number of processors.  Oracle Standard Edition One is suitable for the majority of kinodb applications at a low cost and can be upgraded to Standard or Enterprise editions if required.  Oracle Express (which is available at no cost) may be suitable for smaller applications.  Please contact us for more information.