What is XLiRAD?

In answer to that please examine the pictorial flow of the XLiRAD suite.

How it works.

Animation of how it works!

First the web surfer makes a request to your web server for an HTML page. The web server analyses the request and if it is a request for the FormProcessor then the HTML request is handed over to FormProcessor for processing. This is the ideal spot to mention that to use XLiRAD you must be using a web server that supports java servlets. Most popular web servers do already such as Apache, Netscape and Information Server. If you have aliased the FormProcessor servlet then you can code your templates with this alias also.

FormProcessor takes the arguments passed to it, the key one being the template name. The template is read and parsed for XLiRAD custom command tags. All SQL statements are executed and values are replaced as designed in the template. To resolve the command id's on the template, FormProcessor will make a connection to DBServer and request the command id to be executed. The result set will be passed back to FormProcessor for translation to HTML as specified in the template. The DBServer has persistant connections to your DataBase for lightening quick response time. The newly constructed page is then returned to the surfer for viewing. Voila , we have come full circle in the life of a XLiRAD template.

To construct these templates we have two client tools to help you. SQLEditor is java client tool to help you store your SQL statements for use in templates by DBServer. The SQLEditor has a great GUI to enter these SQL statements and will connect to DBServer (see screen shots) via a TCP/IP socket to save the SQL statements. This means that the SQLEditor client can run on any machine, anywhere in the world, as long as you have a net connection available to DBServer.

The second client tool is the TemplateMaker. It also is a java program that connects to DBServer via TCP/IP sockets. It can run on any machine, anywhere in the world, as long as you have a net connection available to DBServer. Templatemaker is the real workhorse tool. With it you can checkin/checkout templates from DBServer (source code control). But mostly you insert command tags (CMD,REP,REP2) that are tied to SQL statements and specify how you would like the HTML to be shown to the web surfer.

The REP tags allow you to maintain state between HTML pages and (REP) replace their values as needed in your pages. The last section to mention is that you can extend the functionality of XLiRAD yourself by writing your own external functions. We have an open external class meant for you to add your external functions to XLiRAD. You can then access those external functions by refering to the external function on your templates just like any other piece of XLiRAD functionality. You can do anything in these external functions, make socket connections, pass data back and forth, massage data in your unique way, whatever !

Screenshots

The DBServer

The DBServer runs on any server that supports the JRE version 1.1.8. DBServer maintains persistent connections to the chosen database. DBServer uses JDBC drivers to connect to the database. The configuration of DBServer has the following steps :

1. Selecting which database drivers to use, currently we support Oracle, Sybase, and mySql. We plan on adding SQL Server in the near future.
2. Where the database is located and which username and password to use to connect to the database.
3. Name which DB's to connect to and how many persistent connections to that database.
4. Which port that DBServer should listen to for client connections.

The SQL Editor

The SQL Editor is a client program that can run on any machine that supports the JRE 1.1.8 and has net access. With SQLEditor you enter your SQL (Structured Query Lanquage) statements, the values that will need to be passed into the SQL statement from your templates and the database that they should be run on.

The SQLEditor will connect to the DBServer and store your SQL statement there making it available for all developers to use on their templates.

When designing your templates, developers can refer to these SQL statements using tags by specifying the ID number used in storing your SQL statement.

The Template Maker

The Template Maker is the work horse tool for the developers. With this client tool a developer can create new templates, and save them on the DBServer, making that template available for other developers to enhance, use or copy. The TemplateMaker interacting with DBServer has source code control built in. Two developers cannot work on the same template at the same time.

The TemplateMaker is where developers tie SQL (Structured Query Language) statements to a particular template. The SQL statements are identified by their ID number given in the SQLEditor. This is where the format or style of the result set returned from the SQL statement is specified. The developer can choose from many HTML styles such as tables, select lists, radio buttons, check boxes, and edit forms. On tables you can specify alternating background colors.

Typically a developer would create an HTML page using whatever tool they prefer, adding the necessary images, frames, multimedia, whatever, then open it up in the TemplateMaker to add the necessary database interactions. This allows XLiRAD to be compatible with any other HTML commands.