Websydian vs. WebsydianExpress

Introduction

If you have developed with previous versions of Websydian it should be easy to develop for WebsydianExpress as WebsydianExpress is built with Websydian.

There are however some differences which you should be aware of when developing for WebsydianExpress. This document explains these differences and gives a short overview of the new features introduced in WebsydianExpress.

Before you can develop for WebsydianExpress you must install WebsydianExpress and setup a development environment. You can find more information in the installing section.

You can find more information about WebsydianExpress in WebsydianExpress Background.

New Features

If you are used to developing for Websydian there are a number of new features/changes in WebsydianExpress which makes development a little bit different (and much easier).

1. No generate and build of subject areas

As a number of runtime objects are delivered with WebsydianExpress it has become possible to also deliver all of the objects that you previously have had to generate and build (from subject areas).

2. Session / User predefined and installed as part of runtime

Previously you would have to start by specifying that you want to use a session and user pattern - in WebsydianExpress this is predefined and the database etc. is created as part of the installation.

This also means that you do not have direct access to the session and user tables - all access must be done through a set of APIs delivered with the runtime objects.

3. Running web site included

When WebsydianExpress is installed you have a ready-to-run web site installed. So no need to bother with setup and configuring of web servers and DWA runtime

You can then use this site as the foundation for your own web application, or use it as inspiration when designing your own web site.

4. Automatic event creation

Previously all new events had to be made available for the dispatcher by making an EventDispatcher calls FNC EventHandler triple for each event - after which you had to generate and build the event dispatcher.

WebsydianExpress offers the possibility to register the events automatically at the first call of the event at runtime.

5. Modularized web development

WebsydianExpress introduces the concept of a business process, which is a self-contained module that allows users to perform a specific task in WebsydianExpress. A web application will then typically be designed by dividing the application into business process and then combining the business processes to construct the web application.

This gives a more modularized design of web applications compared to standard Websydian development, and makes it much easier to test and reuse parts of a web application, as you can focus on each business process and leave out the rest of the application.

6. Role based menu system

WebsydianExpress includes a menu system which can be used to categorize the different business processes in the application into menus and sub-menus. A click on the menu item will then activate a business process.

A menu item is displayed for the user if one of the roles assigned to the user is also assigned to the menu item.

7. New abstract functions

In order to develop for WebsydianExpress you must use a new set of abstract functions defined in the library model WSYAPI.

Overview

The table below gives a short overview of the differences between Websydian and WebsydianExpress.