The Components of Caché
 |
InterSystems Zen™ technology enables the rapid creation of Rich Internet Applications. It allows developers to easily build Web applications that have the highly responsive and rich user interfaces usually associated with sophisticated desktop solutions.
InterSystems Zen™ is an innovative framework for rapidly creating complex, data-rich Web applications that have sophisticated and highly interactive user interfaces. It employs an implementation of AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) technology, extended to take full use of InterSystems’ object development capabilities and Caché Server Pages (CSP) framework. Zen includes a large library of pre-built components that allow developers to easily include elements such as menus, grids, tables, selection trees, and more, in their Web interfaces. Each component contains information for how it is to be rendered in a browser, using HTML, XML, and in some cases, SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics). Components are extensible, and can quickly be customized using object-oriented development techniques.
Zen makes use of InterSystems CSP framework to provide session management, user authentication, data encryption, and retention of persistent session data across page requests. Therefore, security and session management are automatically “built into” every Zen page, thus alleviating a common headache for Web developers. Zen components can be intermixed with Web pages developed using the tag-based CSP approach.
Zen’s Shared Object Model
Every Zen page at runtime, creates an instance of the page’s object model on both the client and the data server. During operation, Zen automatically takes care of synchronizing the objects. Using objects on both the client and server enables higher performance and better security.
Zen Component Library
The Zen library includes components that implement all the standard HTML control types: input boxes, text boxes, buttons, check boxes, etc. These components have additional behaviors inherited from the Zen control class.
Zen also includes a set of more complex, datarich components that automatically display data from the database and know how to dynamically update this data in response to user events. For example, Zen’s powerful table component automatically displays data within an HTML table using a database query. The table component supports paging, scrolling, sorting by columns, filtering, and a variety of styles. The contents of the table can be refreshed from the server without repainting the entire page.
Other Zen components include:
- Groups – Allows components to be grouped horizontally or vertically.
- Menu – A variety of menu types are supported.
- Grid – Add spreadsheet-style behavior to a Web page.
- Tree – Display hierarchical data with a tree control.
- Tab – A tab component contains a series of tabs, each of which contains a series of other components.
- Chart – A rich set of chart components are implemented using SVG, including line, area, bar, pie, hi-low, and XY charts.
- Graphical Meters – Speedometers, gauges, etc., let you display data as dynamic visual components.
Zen components are assembled into Zen pages. (One or more Zen pages comprise a Web application.) In addition to the components (the content), a Zen page may contain style and layout information, and both clientside and server-side methods.
Zen Reports
Zen comes with a framework for defining customized reports. Reports can be generated in both HTML and .PDF formats, so they can be delivered via the Web or in hard copy. Zen gives you complete programmatic control over formatting and layout and allows the inclusion of (static) Zen charts and graphs. With Zen reports your Rich Internet Application can exactly replicate the reports users are accustomed to seeing, or easily generate useful new ones.
Zen Community
InterSystems Zen Community is an interactive online meeting place for users of the InterSystems Zen web development framework. Through the Zen Community users can find helpful information, ask questions, share their experiences, and exchange code. The community is comprised of partners, customers and InterSystems employees. For more information, please see InterSystems.com/community/zen.