Solution Synopsis :: Development Frameworks and Components

The following are selections of bespoke solutions conceptualized, designed and developed by Symmetry. This synopsis summarizes solution highlights and salient information. Detailed case studies with solution details are available on request.

Business Application Framework

Symmetry has designed and delivered a business application framework to a software company to expedite the company’s product development. A software startup, the client faced the problem of inexperienced resources and high attrition that stalled the development of its taxation product. The framework was designed to provide pre-defined paths and methods to developers for data display, data acceptance, data storage, data retrieval and processing. A persistent framework, it contains separate layers for business logic, database and presentation.

Developed in Delphi, it is optimized for Advantage database from Extended Systems. This framework has helped the client develop complex indirect taxation products with resources of less than 2 years experience.

UDF Engine with Visual Query Builder

The client, a leading vendor of financial and accounting applications, offered completely customizable financial systems that supported multiple databases. However, each time there was a product upgrade, customers were forced to re-execute database customizations. The second issue was with reporting. Customers did not have an easy interface to build user-defined reports. Symmetry’s solution to this problem comprised two components – a User-Definable Field (UDF) Engine and a Visual Query Builder.

The UDF Engine is a data abstraction layer that provides a seamless mechanism to manage the underlying data of any of the client’s products. It incorporates a data dictionary that stores general database information such as tables and views in XML form, functionality to build Named query templates upon this data dictionary, options to make changes to the database and save the difference as delta files and options to interact with the database abstraction layer to retrieve and update data. The Visual Query Builder provides intuitive user interfaces to enable business users without knowledge of SQL to build complex queries. The UDF Engine and Visual Query Builder are developed in Delphi and are database-independent.