Overview

This application was developed in a few months thanks to Openswing capabilities: this development framework allows to create RIAs with a GUI having very complex contents with low development time.

 

Technology overview

JAllInOne is a java three tier application, based on Swing front-end that does not need to be installed in each client machine: server-side application must be deployed inside a web container, such as Tomcat or any other J2EE Application Server. Client-side application is downloaded and cached through Java Web Start from the A.S. and this application comunicates via HTTP with the server-side application. So JAllInOne acts as a web application: it allows to remotelly access to a server-side application, using HTTP like a browser, and does not require any client installation, except for ther JRE (Java Runtime Environment) used to execute the client-side application. One of the main advantages of JAllInOne is the rich UI and consequently a high level of UI usability.

Server side application can be runned in two alternative ways: as a classic stand alone web application or using the Mule open source ESB; using this second running mode, JAllInOne business logic becomes a SOA solution, accessible not only from the JAllInOne front-end but also by another server side layer.

Moreover, response time is good because no UI is transmitted between server and client as with HTML: only data is transferred between client and server.

 

JAllInOne has been developed using OpenSwing framework, based on MVC (Model-View-Controller) paradigma and Java Beans data binding; this framework allows to quickly develop rich internet applications based on Swing front-end: it provides a rich set of graphical input controls, such as grids, trees, forms, lookups, gantt and a full support of events management. It also simplifies comunication between client-side application and server-side application. In this way JAllInOne can benefits of any future “add in” provided by OpenSwing. JAllInOne has been tested on Oracle, MySQL and SQL Server databases. It uses only standard SQL so you could use it potentially with other databases.

User interaction is based on OpenSwing UI behaviour: the next chapter reports general infos about OpenSwing UI behaviour and other general features provided by JAllInOne.

Many other open source libraries are included in JAllInOne, such as: POI HSSF to export grid content in XLS format, Jasper Report/iText to generate PDF reports.

 

Runtime Environment

To run JAllInOne, the application must be deployed inside a J2EE Application Server; it does not require an EJB container, so a web container only is required, such as Tomcat.

JDK must be 1.4 or above.

Application installation is very simple:

• on the server-side a .war file could be deployed inside the Application Server
• on the client-side a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 1.4.2 or above must be installed to allow the execution of the client-side application, through Java Web Start (embedded in the JRE)

Detailed installation instructions are provided at the end of the document.

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