Technology

Our application development and deployment technology is called kinodb.  

It allows the developer to define every detail of an application – from data structures to reports, security model to event handling – entirely in data.  It's not a code generator, it's a full metamodel of the application which is loaded and delivered by a single application server component.  As a development environment it provides unparalleled productivity, and as an application deployment platform it delivers massively scaleable and easily manageable applications.  All applications are delivered direct to users' browsers (Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox and Chrome are all supported), meaning that a new application can be rolled out throughout an organisation – or outside it – without the need for any changes to users' systems.

It is hard to overstate the benefits delivered by maintaining the application definition entirely as data.  It means that applications are far faster in initial development (typically delivered in around 15% of the time taken by other technologies) and – perhaps even more importantly – are inherently more maintainable over successive years, even by developers who are unfamiliar with the initial design.  This is because all references to the use of every application entity (field, table, report component and so on) are immediately available – both to the developer and to the server component that delivers the application.

As the impact of any change can be assessed immediately and definitively, kinodb applications are far less susceptible to the ‘code attrition’ familiar to anyone managing large developments, whereby each successive change compromises the initial design and implementation of a system.

The following sections provide a very brief overview of some of kinodb's functionality; contact us to learn more and to see why we can justify our claim of extraordinary productivity.

Architecture

A kinodb application is deployed using standard technology (Oracle database, Java servlet container, browser clients) onto any standard server platform (Unix, Linux, IBM AIX, Windows etc.).  Applications have no client footprint – nothing except a browser is required to access full application functionality on a PC or mobile device.

Applications can be integrated with existing intranet / extranet content as required.

Single sign-on is supported, integrating with Windows security schemes to enable corporate users to be recognised by, and securely authenticated to, the application.

Support is provided for mail – both outgoing and incoming, with message processing rules being used to direct incoming traffic appropriately.

Data management

kinodb provides extensive and rigorous support for the maintenance of large volumes of highly structured data.

kinodb employs Oracle for its database management.  Oracle is the leading relational database management system (RDBMS) and is capable of scaling to meet the needs of organisations with many tens of thousands of users.

kinodb's metadata model extends the relational data model to allow the encapsulation of business rules and processing logic in tandem with the definition of the data structures to which they apply.

Applications developed and deployed using kinodb may be of any scale (thousands of tables, terabytes of data, thousands of concurrent users) whilst remaining manageable, supportable and maintainable.

functionality

kinodb provides a wide range of built-in functionality.  The following list is not exhaustive but is intended to be a guide to its breadth of coverage.

• Built-in scheduled job processing allows tasks such as interface data loads, data archiving, automated email notifications etc. to be performed without user intervention.
• Storage of documents within the database, or linking to documents within a corporate document repository.
• Automated performance testing to determine potential bottlenecks (CPU, disk channel bandwidth, network speed) in the overall architecture.
• Realm-based security model enabling application administrators to manage users' rights individually, in groups, or as a combination.
• Ability for reports to be delivered directly to the browser or output in PDF or other (for instance Word, Excel) formats.
• Support for hierarchical data structures.
• Support for data validation rules of any complexity.
• Ability to implement and deploy modular functionality such as workflow engines or any rules-based processing techniques.
• Fully automated production of all SQL statements required by the application.  This is performed as each statement is first required, so changes to the application cannot break existing SQL statements.
• Automated generation of forms, list views, tree views and so on, drastically reducing initial development effort and subsequent maintenance requirements.  Again, each form is generated when required, so changes to the design are immediately reflected in the user interface of the application – even when the developer is making changes to the (running) application.

Flexibility

The metadata model means that applications are inherently faster to develop, easier to test, and far more amenable to subsequent enhancement than applications developed using other techniques.

Built-in application management capabilities leverage the metadata definition to provide:

• Instant visibility of the impact of any proposed change
• A full audit trail of the development process
• Full manageability of the application development / test / deployment / upgrade process