Personnel Demo Application Background

Description    Using   Model Contents    Background

Run-Time Configuration

The Personnel Demo application on the Websydian web is running as a three-tier Client/Server application.  The first tier is the web browser, the second tier is a Microsoft Internet Information Server running on Windows NT, and the third tier is a DB2/400 database residing on our iSeries.  The application code running on the second and third tiers were developed exclusively using AllFusion Plex augmented with the Websydian class library.

Protecting Users from each Other

The Demo application is available to anyone on the Internet.  It demonstrates how you can manage information in a simple database, including creation, retrieval, update, and deletion of records in the database, all done using a web browser.  However, since several users may access the application at the same time, there is a risk that they may interfere with each other, creating a very confusing experience:  Say you change a record, but just after you make the change, another user deletes the record.  Not knowing what happened, you may conclude that AllFusion Plex and Websydian are no good - and that is not what we're trying to achieve here!

For this reason we have decided to completely eliminate the risk of interference between users by giving each user his own set of records to work with.  The changes you make to your copy of the records are visible to you, but not to anyone else.  The copy of the records are bound to a user session, so if you start a new session (by re-entering the application from the beginning), you will get a new set of records, and the changes you made in the first session will be gone.  This ensures that all Demo users will be able have the same experience.

Demo Application Uses JavaScript

The Change and Create pages for employees have a 'Select' push button.  When this button is pushed, a new browser window is opened, and a list of departments in the database is displayed.  From here a department can be selected, and the department code and department name will be transferred back to the original change/create page.

This effect (creating a separate Web Browser window)  is achieved with a few lines of JavaScript.  This demonstrates how the User Interface can be easily extended with more advanced and user friendly features.