m-Power Documentation

Build Process

The m-Power build process has two components the Template and Application Specifications. The Template is the program shell that controls the functionality and the general layout for the application. The m-Power Application Specifications are the detailed program definitions including, but not limited to: necessary tables, fields, table joins, filters, work fields, and external program calls. m-Power users access the Application Specifications with a point-and-click interface.

The m-Power compile process combines the Application Specifications with the selected Template to generate the application. The compile process automates these steps:

• Generate the Java source code, including the SQL database access statements
• Compile the Java source code into a J2EE Java servlet program
• Create the HTML presentation file
• Create the XML properties file for setting application-level options
• Deploy the entire package to the application server (Tomcat, by default.)

All layers of the generated program are fully customizable for the m-Power user. m-Power includes m-Painter, which has both a What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) interface and a source code editor for maintaining the HTML presentation file and the XML properties file.