Company builds agile, secure web user interface with Visual WebGui

This Best Practice is part of a collection of advice provided by information technology professionals on how they have solved various challenges, and addressed IT priorities within their organizations.

Company:
TYCON Software Engineering provides Enterprise Application Integration and Business Process Management with its own technologic platform (BIZUIT) that allows implementations of a brand new transactional business model. The company also provides consulting and development services in .NET platform with a team of technical and business people with large experience in the industry.

The BIZUIT Technology Platform is a suite of Products that offers Business Process Management, Enterprise Application Integration and Application’s Visual Development, Information Management (Dashboards, KPIs, reports, graphics, statistics) and Document Management (Document’s digitalization, storage and search)

The problem:
TYCON's team looked for a solution that would allow them to take the WinForms code generated by the BIZUIT BPM Platform and produce a web interface as an output. Since this process had to be implemented in less than 60 days, the solution also needed to allow the fast implementation of the project's requirements.

The solution:
The team chose Visual WebGui as the core platform for the Web UI in their products because of the simple and cost-effective translation process from the custom WinForms code generated by their BIZUIT Platform to a fully AJAX-enabled UI. As a result, Visual WebGui allowed TYCON to improve its platform in a very cost-effective way that cut development time significantly.

Who provided this information:
Ariel Schwindt, CEO, TYCON S.A.

How it worked:
The overall implementation process was pretty simple. We just took our WinForms code generated by our BPM tool (BIZUIT) and changed a couple of namespaces and it just worked. On top of that, the deployment process with Visual WebGui was also very simple. We just modified our tool to publish the required assemblies in any virtual directory.

With Visual WebGui we were able to build an agile and secure web user interface that meets the requirements of our customers in terms of functionality and time-to-market Interface. Using Visual WebGui allowed Tycon to deliver solutions faster than expected saving time and resources due to the easy and quick implementation process of the existing WinForms code. The original plan to convert the WinForms generated code to web was a 5-month/5-man effort. With Visual WebGui, TYCON completed the job using only 1 developer in just one 1 month.

Rules for success:
In order to empower BIZUIT with a multi-platform form generator in a short term, a technology that does not require much effort in the implementation and deployment was needed. Other key features needed were interoperability with ASP.Net and Security. Visual WebGui was the cornerstone of the whole matter.

Classic mistakes:

• Not taking advantage of the discussion forums. There is a high probability of finding experience with and solutions to the problems similar to those we have ourselves.
• To ignore the VWG architecture. It is important to know that in VWG everything runs in the server and attention should be paid to the way events are implemented.
• Not to have basic ASP.Net knowledge. Along with the previous issue this can lead to build an application with performance problems since a web application does not work the same way a Win32 application does.
• Since VWG allows designing a form like a Win32 form, the developer may sometimes abuse this feature creating complicated user interfaces.
• To assume that an application tested within a LAN will work the same way from outside.

Best practice checklist:

• Actively participate in the discussion forums.
• Keep up-to-date with the newest releases.
• Have good taste and common sense when designing the user interface.
• Test applications in a web environment not only in a LAN.

Three must-ask questions:

• Since web development is complex, are the developers qualified in the use of HTML, JavaScript, AJAX?
• Are client weight and network consumption issues of concern?
• Are many presentation layer technologies are required?

Hindsight is 20/20:
I wish I knew better the way VWG works internally before coding.

Final takeaway:
To use VWG in an existing ASP.Net project does not mean that this “migration” cannot be made in parts. VWG has robust interoperability mechanisms that allow hosting ASP.Net pages in a VWG application and the other way round. Also events can be raised from a common JavaScript and be captured from a VWG application making it highly flexible and suitable.

This Best Practice was provided by Visual WebGui. For more information, contact Navot Peled, CEO and Founder of Visual WebGui. Tel: +972-9-767-3063, navot.peled@gizmox.com

The ideas expressed in this article are solely those of the vendor and its client, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of ITworld.