Doing an ApplicationsSurvey
In one to two weeks typically, an ApplicationsArchitect and Project Manager approximate and document an applications solution by publishing a hundreds-of-pages manual called the ApplicationsSurvey. An ApplicationsSurvey identifies the components, some would say services, of your application. These components include the menus and responsibilities that each end-user uses to access the application, use cases that describe applications business functionality, and the applications database design.
TenFoldTools provides transactions and reports to facilitate conceiving an application and publishing a formal ApplicationsSurvey manual:
| Transaction | Description |
| Create Application |
Most TenFoldTools transactions suggest considerable applications functionality after relatively little data entry.
You use CreateApplication to enter several information fields. In response, CreateApplication creates your first applications version, a desktop icon to invoke your application, several standard usernames and passwords, and an Administrator sign-on that contains many applications-administrator server, end-user, and security transactions. So after little typing, CreateApplication creates a fully functional, secure, scalable, administrable application (albeit without business functionality yet). |
| Describe Application |
DescribeApplication collects your applications requirements in an easy-to-use, fill-in-the-blank transaction. DescribeApplication guides you to provide sufficient information, so that TenFoldTools automatically can publish documentation (called an ApplicationsSurvey). This documentation helps stakeholders agree on high-level goals, concepts, terminology, features, and business problems that the new application addresses.
You use DescribeApplication to draft applications description and feature lists that become part of the ApplicationsSurvey. |
| BuildMenus |
TenFoldTools and the TenFold Way make it easy to visualize an application as a sum of its applications services. Menus are an important service to end-users.
You use BuildMenus to describe menus and responsibilities, which in turn describe all services, such as transactions, reports, et cetera, that you application provides to its various classes of end-users. AutoDocument uses your menu and responsibility descriptions to automatically produce menu documentation and the TenFold RenderingEngine uses these same descriptions to produce menus and to provide responsibility-based security. Creating fully functional menus, responsibilities, menu documentation, and responsibility-based security requires no additional work and no programming. |
| Describe UseCases |
UseCases describe significant business processes, especially those that are the drivers for a new application. Stakeholders read automatically generated UseCase documentation to verify that UseCases describe the true problem and desired process flow.
You use DescribeUseCases to list UseCases, their goals, participants and their tasks, step-by-step business processes, and expected results. |
| Design Database |
By definition, every TenFold-powered application manages data in a relational database. TenFoldTools provides tools to speed the design of an applications database and, most importantly to ensure that it is easy to change an applications database design without requiring applications logic or services rework.
Use DesignDatabase to create and modify your applications database design (or import and modify an existing database design). DesignDatabase lets you add, modify, and delete database design groups, tables, columns, and keys. DatabaseDesign can export or import an XML file appropriate for integration with database design and ER modeling tools such as DBDesigner or ERwin. DatabaseDesign also lets you import database semantics from an RDBMS dictionary like the Oracle Data Dictionary. |