Composer

iCraft's core product provides sophisticated database form design for applications accessible over tcp/ip (www) networks. Employing standard web-browser technologies Composer software pushes the boundries of web-applications by providing its users familiar desktop application interfaces delivered through javascript enabled internet browsers.

It could be considered that until now internet based database forms have provided basic paper based data entry/retrieval services. Macromedia have successfully bridged the desktop/internet functionality gap with the introduction of multi os plugins. iCraft however have managed to deliver desktop application database performance entirely within the standard browser.

iCraft's core product is called Composer. It is a web-based form designer and is used to design web pages, which manipulate databases. Composer provides a rapid development environment with which to generate web-enabled database screens. The product is highly interactive and uses modern techniques such as drag-and-drop to create forms for data in tables and views in a database. The product combines the best features of other available products such as Microsoft Access Form Designer, Oracle Forms, FrontPage and Dreamweaver as well as having its own unique features. The underlying database for which Composer can generate screens, is currently for Microsoft SQL Server and My-SQL databases. This however is being adapted to incorporate other databases including Oracle, PostgreSQL and XML.

Composer Features

Uniquely, the product is native to the web browser and does not require any other interface. Both the design phase and the use of its generated forms are through the browser, and no other interface is required. Consequently, no client installation package is required. Composer requires a server installation which is simply an ASP.NET website on the web server, or alternatively, a classic ASP website with a server registered COM component. Composer also needs a connection to a database, either on the server itself or on any network connected database server.

The product is specifically designed to generate forms and queries to the database. Complex screens can be designed with Composer such as editable multiple master-detail records on one screen and popup windows for editing lookup data.

Product updates are only ever applied to the server, making version control very manageable.

Database design is done by first identifying the database from the database server on a web-based screen.

Composer interrogates the database schema and gathers information on the tables, views, fields, and data types.

Then a blank web page is created and named.

Items, represented as icons on the main screen, can then be dragged and dropped onto the newly created blank web page. Items are entities such as views, tables, recordsets, data fields, buttons, images, style sheets and other abstracted objects.

When an item placed on the web page is highlighted, its control parameters become available for customisation. These parameters are attributes such as height, width, position in the page, type of control, triggers for on click, on focus, on blur, and others. All the control parameters are specifically designed around presenting, and processing the data on the page, such as parameters for validation rules.

Composer fits between the designer and programmer environments, combining ease of use with a powerful mechanism for presenting and updating data. Although other designer packages provide certain functionality to view data from web pages, they are usually basic and limited to data listing and single form entry screens. Conversely there are developer packages such as Visual Studio, which requires significant programming experience to achieve the same results as Composer