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ResQ Enterprise™
was designed as a complete enterprise solution combining both
Customer Relationship Management and Enterprise Resource Planning
functionality in one solution.
It is
designed to share information across all aspects of the business.
Components include; marketing automation, sales-force automation,
customer service, field service,
inventory control, asset management, order processing, accounting
and production scheduling to name just the major components.
N-Tier
Software Development
We employ
a development methodology that is centered on component-based
or n-tier architecture. The purpose of this architecture is
two-fold. First is to encapsulate business rules and processes.
By encapsulating these business rules, the components developed
can be leveraged across the enterprise instead of being recreated
in multiple applications. A single component can then be modified
as these rules change instead of source code distributed across
the enterprise.
The second
purpose is to ensure data integrity within the enterprise.
These database components localize access to the data. If
errors in the data are discovered, a single component can
be analyzed and remediated instead of multiple processes across
the enterprise.
Object
Oriented Design
OSI continually
develops and maintains a library of object (template) components.
The reusability of these template components enables us to
decrease development time and augment functionality to satisfy
specific client requirements. This allows us to customize
an implemented ResQ very quickly and less expensively than
some of the competitive products that are on legacy platforms.
During a software development project, the applicability of
these components and third party offerings are analyzed and
added to the project build, if suitable. This model also allows
Open Solutions to introduce new functionality and features
in a very short period of time all the while maintaining strict
QA processes and beta tests.
Glossary
N-tier
An n-tier application program is one that is distributed among
three or more separate computers in a distributed network.
The most common form of n-tier (meaning 'some number of tiers')
is the 3-tier application, in which user interface programming
is in the user's computer, business logic is in a more centralized
computer, and needed data is in a computer that manages a
database.
N-tier
application structure implies the client/server program model.
Where there are more than three distribution levels or tiers
involved, the additional tiers in the application are usually
associated with the business logic tier.
In addition
to the advantages of distributing programming and data throughout
a network, n-tier applications have the advantages that any
one tier can run on an appropriate processor or operating
system platform and can be updated independently of the other
tiers. Communication between the program tiers uses special
program interfaces such as those provided by the Common Object
Request Broker Architecture.
3-tier
application A 3-tier application is
an application program that is organized into three major
parts, each of which is distributed to a different place or
places in a network. The three parts are:
- The workstation or presentation interface
- The
business logic
- The
database and programming related to managing it
In a typical
3-tier application, the application user's workstation contains
the programming that provides the graphical user interface
(graphical user interface) and application-specific entry
forms or interactive windows. (Some data that is local or
unique for the workstation user is also kept on the local
hard disk.)
Business
logic is located on a local area network () server or other
shared computer. The business logic acts as the server for
client requests from workstations. In turn, it determines
what data is needed (and where it is located) and acts as
a client in relation to a third tier of programming that might
be located on a mainframe computer.
The third
tier includes the database and a program to manage read and
write access to it. While the organization of an application
can be more complicated than this, the 3-tier view is a convenient
way to think about the parts in a large-scale program.
A 3-tier
application uses the client/server-computing model. With three
tiers or parts, each part can be developed concurrently by
different team of programmers coding in different languages
from the other tier developers. Because the programming for
a tier can be changed or relocated without affecting the other
tiers, the 3-tier model makes it easier for an enterprise
or software packager to continually evolve an application
as new needs and opportunities arise. Existing applications
or critical parts can be permanently or temporarily retained
and encapsulation within the new tier of which it becomes
a component.
The 3-tier
application architecture is consistent with the ideas of distributed.
Database
A database is a collection of data that is organized so
that its contents can easily be accessed, managed, and updated.
The most prevalent type of database is the relational database,
a tabular database in which data is defined so that it can
be reorganized and accessed in a number of different ways.
A distributed database is one that can be dispersed or replicated
among different points in a network. An object-oriented programming
database is one that is congruent with the data defined in
object classes and subclasses. Databases contain aggregations
of data records or files, such as sales transactions, product
catalogs and inventories, and customer profiles. Typically,
a database manager provides users the capabilities of controlling
read/write access, specifying report generation, and analyzing
usage. Databases and database managers are prevalent in large
mainframe systems, but are also present in smaller distributed
workstation and mid-range systems such as the AS/400 and on
personal computers. Structured Query Language is a standard
language for making interactive queries from and updating
a database such as IBM's DB2, Microsoft's Access, and database
products from Oracle, Sybase, and Computer Associates.
Client/server
Client/server describes the relationship between two computer
programs in which one program, the client, makes a service
request from another program, the server, which fulfills the
request. Although the client/server idea can be used by programs
within a single computer, it is a more important idea in a
network. In a network, the client/server model provides a
convenient way to interconnect programs that are distributed
efficiently across different locations. Computer transactions
using the client/server model are very common. For example,
to check your bank account from your computer, a client program
in your computer forwards your request to a server program
at the bank. That program may in turn forward the request
to its own client program that sends a request to a database
server at another bank computer to retrieve your account balance.
The balance is returned back to the bank data client, which
in turn serves it back to the client in your personal computer,
which displays the information for you.
The client/server
model has become one of the central ideas of network computing.
Most business applications being written today use the client/server
model. So does the Internet's main program, TCP/IP. In marketing,
the term has been used to distinguish distributed computing
by smaller dispersed computers from the "monolithic" centralized
computing of mainframe computers. But this distinction has
largely disappeared as mainframes and their applications have
also turned to the client/server model and become part of
network computing.
In the
usual client/server model, one server, sometimes called a
daemon, is activated and awaits client requests. Typically,
multiple client programs share the services of a common server
program. Both client programs and server programs are often
part of a larger program or application. Relative to the Internet,
your Web browser is a client program that requests services
(the sending of Web pages or files) from a Web server (which
technically is called a Hypertext Transport Protocol or Hypertext
Transfer Protocol server) in another computer somewhere on
the Internet. Similarly, your computer with TCP/IP installed
allows you to make client requests for files from File Transfer
Protocol (File Transfer Protocol) servers in other computers
on the Internet.
Other
program relationship models included master/slave, with one
program being in charge of all other programs, and peer-to-peer,
with either of two programs able to initiate a transaction.
Platform
1) In computers, a platform is an underlying computer system
on which application programs can run. On personal computers,
Windows 2000 and the Macintosh are examples of two different
platforms. On enterprise servers or mainframes, IBM's S/390
is an example of a platform.
A platform
consists of an operating system, the computer system's coordinating
program, which in turn is built on the instruction set for
a processor or microprocessor, the hardware that performs
logic operations and manages data movement in the computer.
The operating system must be designed to work with the particular
processor's set of instructions. As an example, Microsoft's
Windows 2000 is built to work with a series of microprocessors
from the Intel Corporation that share the same or similar
sets of instructions. There are usually other implied parts
in any computer platform such as a motherboard and a data
bus, but these parts have increasingly become modularized
and standardized.
Historically,
most application programs have had to be written to run on
a particular platform. Each platform provided a different
application program interface for different system services.
Thus, a PC program would have to be written to run on the
Windows platform and then again to run on the Macintosh platform.
Although these platform differences continue to exist and
there will probably always be proprietary differences between
them, new open or standards-conforming interfaces now allow
many programs to run on different platforms or to interoperate
with different platforms through mediating or "broker" programs.
2) A platform
is any base of technologies on which other technologies or
processes are built.
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