Introducing Extreme Rapid Application Development for Oracle E-Business Suite A CaoSys White Paper November 2008
Abstract RAD has been around since the early 1990's. You may be familiar with the term Rapid Application Development or RAD and your understanding of the term maybe concrete or perhaps a little vague; in any case you almost certainly understand that RAD refers to a software development methodology that brings the ability to develop high quality software solutions very quickly when compared to traditional development methodologies. A RAD based development cycle is typically very short, perhaps as short as a few weeks and probably no longer than 3 months (although there are always exceptions). RAD is achieved by adopting time-boxed iterative approach to development and the creation of prototypes. This is the first in a series of papers that introduce you to Extreme RAD using CS*Form. RAD is a suitable methodology to use for what might be considered smaller software projects, that is to say that if you are intending to create a major new ERP system with hundreds of components using a variety of different technologies then RAD is certainly not the way to go. When we talk about smaller projects, we are perhaps referring to those projects that provide functionality for only a handful of users (although this may not be the case, if the new application is small it may be deployed to thousands of users), or utility software or perhaps new functionality to fill the gaps in a larger software product. A RAD delivered solution is less likely to be a mission critical piece of software (although it could be) and maybe something considered as a nice to have (although it might be essential). The point here is that although RAD can be applied to pretty much any type of software project, large or small, it is typically used for smaller pieces of work. Okay, so we understand what RAD is, so what is Extreme RAD? Put simply, Extreme RAD is taking RAD to the next level by providing a set of tools that significantly speed up the process of creating a solution. Using Extreme RAD would follow the same methods as normal RAD, i.e. you would gather requirements, time box those requirements, iteratively develop the software and deliver a solution but the tools used to deliver would have the following characteristics... Easy to use - By this I mean very easy to use, not a programming tool that requires a high level of technical ability such a JDeveloper or Visual Studio. Single IDE - A single, simple Integrated Development Environment where you can define the solution, version control it, test and deploy it. Shallow learning curve - Achieving productivity with the tool should be very quick, literally a few hours from never having seen it. Page 2 of 12
Not reliant on IT resource - The tool should offer functionality that can enable non IT users to develop and deliver a solution. There are many development tools available that can be said to offer RAD capabilities, such as JDeveloper or Visual Studio but whilst each of these tools can offer a single IDE, they are certainly not simple to use and require a high degree of technical ability, you need to be a skilled software developer or programmer to be able to effectively use them which puts the development of any solution firmly in the hands of the IT department. An Extreme RAD tool should enable almost anyone with a little technical know-how to be able to deliver a smaller project. Extreme RAD tools are plentiful, from code generators, to form builders to website generators and more but when it comes to Extreme RAD tools specifically for the Oracle E-Business Suite, these are thin on the ground. In fact, there is only one tool available that can deliver Extreme RAD capabilities for Oracle E-Business Suite and that is a tool called CS*Form from CaoSys. This paper introduces you to CS*Form and how it can be used to create extensions for the Oracle E-Business Suite extremely rapidly. Page 3 of 12
Introduction CS*Form is a component of CS*Applications, the complete toolkit of productivity and compliance solutions from CaoSys. CS*Form is a very powerful and feature rich development tool that can be used by almost anyone with a little (if any) SQL knowledge. No programming skills are needed and solutions can be developed and delivered astonishingly quickly. A deep-dive into all the features and functionality of CS*Form is well beyond the scope of this paper so the best way to demonstrate Extreme RAD at work with CS*Form is to work through a simple example requirement, from the development of the solution to the deployment to the end-user. Requirements For this example, we will look at what is involved in creating a single screen query solution and how it can be deployed to the end-users menu. A new screen is required that will show the user how many months it has seen since a user last logged into the system, this will be used to help the administrators disable inactive users. The new screen should automatically query all users that are currently active and show the following information... Username User description Date the user last logged on The number of months since the user last logged The date the user has been active from The screen should highlight the username in red if the user has never been used. The screen should sort the data by the date last used, so the user who hasn't been used the longest is displayed first. Page 4 of 12
Build the Solution The creation of this CS*Form is very simple and will only take a few minutes to create and deploy. The first step is to define the CS*Form header in the CS*Form IDE as follows... The data source for a CS*Form can be almost any valid SQL SELECT statement. You can also specify just a table or view name and CS*Form will generate the SQL for you. The data source can also be inherited from another CS*Form. Now the solution can be compiled, once this is done we can modify the solutions Items as follows... Specify conditional formatting to highlight users never used... Finally set the screen to automatically query on entry and set the read-only flag... Page 5 of 12
Compile the solution and that is it, the solution is complete. We can test the solution directly from the IDE... The CS*Form Runtime Engine reads the solution metadata and renders the new screen dynamically. The solution is fully integrated into Oracle E- Business Suite with a native look and feel. Page 6 of 12
Deploy the Solution CS*Form solutions can be deployed in a number of ways; perhaps the easiest method for simple solutions is using the Direct Deployment functionality. Within the IDE, press the Deploy button and from the Deploy dialog find the responsibility to which the new solution should be added and then drill down the required menu structure, enter a menu prompt and description and press Add to Menu... The new solution is now deployed. Here we can see the new menu option in action within the System Administrator responsibility... This solution was created and deployed in less than 5 minutes and did not require any programming skills other than perhaps a little knowledge of SQL. Page 7 of 12
Enhancing the Solution To further demonstrate the simplicity of working with CS*Form, we will walk through a few enhancement to the solution, including... Allow user to disable a user by entering an End Date Create a report for the screen that can be printed CS*Form employs a simple but effective security layer when it comes to making a solution capable of updating the database. This security layer ensures that the CS*Form administrator can precisely control which tables and column values can be modified and which CS*Form solutions have the functionality enabled. For our first requirement, we need the ability to update the END_DATE column on the FND_USER table; we define these capabilities in the System Security screen as follows... We also need to list our new User Activity solution as having this functionality enabled... The data source for our solution should be modified to include the END_DATE column and the ROWID of the row we want to update... Page 8 of 12
Now link the solution to the FND_USER table and enable the Update capability... Switch off the Read-Only option... Make all items other than END_DATE non-navigable... Link the END_DATE item to the END_DATE column on the Base Table and then compile the solution... Page 9 of 12
Here is the enhanced solution in action... To disable a user, enter a value in the End Date item that is before the current date and press the save toolbar button. For our second enhancement, we need to enable the CS*Report functionality for our solution, this involves not much more than a few mouse clicks and we will have a report option to go with our new screen that is invoked as a concurrent process. First, enable CS*Report and set the available options... In this case, we want to exclude the END_DATE from our report... Once the solution is compiled, the new report will be available at runtime directly within the solution via the Reports menu... Page 10 of 12
Run the report, specify the printer and number of copies... The report is run concurrently... Here is the output... As you can see, CS*Form is very simple to use and results can be achieved very rapidly - this is Extreme RAD in action. In future white papers we will examine some of the more advanced features of CS*Form and build a fully featured mini-application that is completely integrated into Oracle E-Business Suite. For more information and to download a fully featured evaluation edition of CS*Form along with all of our other tools visit us online at www.caosys.com. Page 11 of 12
Introducing Extreme RAD for Oracle E-Business Suite November 2008 Author: Craig O'Neill Email: info@appltop.com Website: www.appltop.com Various product and service names mentioned are trademarks of CaoSys Limited. Oracle and Oracle E-Business Suite are trademarks or registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation. Any other names are used for references only and may be trademarks of their respective owners. Copying in any form is strictly prohibited without prior written consent of CaoSys Limited. Copyright 1999-2008 CaoSys Limited. All rights reserved.