The design and application prospect of platform-based software

1. Background description

In recent years, with the double pull of policy and market, China's software market has maintained a sustained and rapid growth. In 2002, China's software market achieved 21.1% growth, sales reached 34.5 billion yuan. 2003, China's software market sales reached about 40 billion yuan, the software market is further heated. Under the market size of $ tens of billions of, the fact that software projects have a very low success rate is masked. According to statistics, more than 80% of projects cannot be successfully delivered within the initial estimated budget and schedule. This has a serious impact on both the user and the manufacturer, and is also very detrimental to the healthy growth of the software industry. Users have doubts about the efficiency and ability of the manufacturer, and the effect of using the software.

It is difficult for manufacturers to maintain a healthy cash flow and gain sufficient profit during the project, and can not improve the level and efficiency of product development. The industry has been trying to solve this vicious cycle, the solution is to rely on software engineering, manufacturers adopt more scientific, more standardized process organization project development, such as software production process of CMM (software Maturity Model) specification; the second is software technology. As far as software technology is concerned, platform-based technology is an important trend of software product development, and platform-based software has the characteristics of independence, openness, manageability and extensibility.

Platform-based software is divided into technical support platform and application realization platform. The user of the technology-supported platform is the software developer, the provider is responsible for the maintenance and upgrade of the platform, the user is responsible for the platform-based upper layer implementation. This kind of platform includes software middleware, development tools, application server and so on. The user of the application implementation platform is the end user, the provider not only is responsible for the maintenance and upgrade of the platform, but also is responsible for the implementation of platform-based upper-level applications.

For example, a Web site using Application Server WebLogic as a technology-supported platform, the server's provider (BEA) will not be responsible for the construction of specific site content. and application implementation platform (such as OUR-ERP system) not only responsible for platform maintenance and upgrade, more important is responsible for the implementation of the upper application, such as enterprise management software in the financial management, invoicing, Campus management of general management, educational administration and so on. This article mainly describes the application development platform of the target, definition, technical framework, implementation and application prospects.

If there is no special description, in the following description platform software refers to the application development platform software.

2. Platform-based software design requirements

1) Flexible and convenient two-time development capability

Traditional management software is mostly born out of the combination of financial software and MRPII, this combination is not only blunt, integration is not high, but also rigid structure, inflexible, unable to adapt to the ever-changing enterprise environment and demand, in the customer and two times the development process often slow progress, the implementation of difficulties. As a new generation of software systems, platform software should have better application development and maintenance tools and interfaces, implementation can be quickly based on the characteristics of the user deployment and two development, users can maximize the use of their own characteristics of the management software.

2) Implement Distributed Application System

Traditional management software is limited to internal resource management. Platform-based software should be a whole chain of enterprises through the Internet and data platform to form a closer collaborative production organization, to achieve the resource sharing between enterprises and enterprises, to dredge their respective information silos, to achieve all kinds of functional interconnection, interoperability, interactive and effective integration. In the past, the competition between enterprises and enterprises was transformed into the competition between enterprise chain and enterprise chain, which greatly enhanced the competitive ability of enterprises.

3) independent of hardware and software environment

The benefit to the user is that the user does not have to care about what hardware or database platform to use, and the application software is not affected by the migration of the hardware platform. For example, most traditional domestic management software systems can only support the Windows operating system and MS SQL Server database, the UNIX, os/390 and other large host platforms, as well as Oracle, DB2 and other enterprise-class databases are powerless, And the new generation of platform software can support a variety of operating system platform, a variety of database systems, users can have more flexibility, a wide range of options.

4) technology independence for upper-level applications

The platform software makes the application software running on the upper level to some extent not related to the technology, but to the specific business, a platform can run enterprise management system, campus management system or hospital management system.

5) using B/S and C/s structure combined

b/S structure with the features of free installation, C/S has a higher security, do not install inaccessible. As long as the Internet, you can through the browser to B/s structure system access, enter the account number and password any machine (such as Internet cafes) can log on the system. Therefore, for online transactions, portals, etc. can adopt B/s structure, but for important internal data, such as financial management, material management and other internal confidential information and data, preferably using C/s structure. However, whether B/S or C/s structure, must adopt a distributed structure, remote network access, platform design using three-layer structure.

In addition, workflows, report charting tools, and so on, should also be combined with application development tools to provide a platform to support management of application development.

3. Platform-based software design ideas

1) Platform Architecture

The platform architecture includes the system's user terminal, System management tools and application development tools. The user terminal is mainly used for organizing and presenting the upper-level application system content, and the users are the end users, such as accountants can do financial data processing at the user terminal. The System management tool is mainly used for the basic maintenance of upper application and running environment, such as System log view, personnel information maintenance and so on.

Application development tools can be maintained by different people at different stages. Used by the System modeler of the platform provider during application development to design and implement upper-layer applications, which are used by the system maintainers of the platform provider and the system administrator of the user during system maintenance (which should be primarily the responsibility of the system maintainers of the platform provider).

2) Upper Application

Due to the technical independence and application independence of the Platform software, the platform software can be widely used in various fields of society and various industries, such as enterprises, schools, hospitals, etc., in addition to special requirements (hardware and external System interface, etc.), other parts can be implemented by application development tools, to achieve the application of non-programmable system construction. Prior to the construction of the upper-level system should be carried out to believe the needs of research and analysis, system design and demonstration, the use of Platform application development tools for system-free implementation of the overall workload can only account for 1/3-1/4.

3) Operating environment and other

Including application server, database system, remote communication system, operating system. The famous application server vendors include Bea WebLogic, IBM WebSphere, JBoss org, etc. The database system includes Oracle, IBM db2,ms SQL Server, and so on. The design of remote communication system should give priority to the problem of network transmission speed. The system should also be designed for cross-platform applications where the Windows/unix system can be used together, such as an application server capable of running on a high-performance multi-CPU Solaris or OS2 operating system.

4. Advantages of platform-based software

1) Breadth of application

Platform-based software has a more comprehensive and extensive coverage. In the past, various types of independent functions of the management software, difficult to integrate, such as customer Relationship Management (CRM), Human resources management (HR), logistics Management (LM), educational management, book management, enterprises, schools or hospitals, people, wealth, things can not be unified management and monitoring. ERP can effectively integrate financial management, sales management, financial management, customer relations, procurement and inventory, human resources and other management modules to form a large system. The information of the platform-based software is unified storage to realize the sharing of management information, so as to improve the effective collaboration and rapid response within the organization.

2) Good Developmental

Unlike other software, platform-based software is built on a common platform of a system, the modules are both strong independence, and can be used independently, through a unified data interface to achieve seamless integration between each other, but also to achieve a consistent external interface. Therefore, the platform software has a greater degree of flexibility and scalability, not only according to the customer's current needs to choose and collocation, but also has a better two times development interface.

3) Fast Adaptability

Changes in user requirements make the software provider the most headache, but due to the different communication and understanding between the two, software systems in the development and use of the process of change is unavoidable. According to statistics, software source more than 20% of the changes required for the workload will not be less than the re-development of a system, which is one of the main reasons for software system failure. The application development tools of platform-based software can realize the modification of application system without programming, which has quicker and more convenient adaptability.

5. Application prospect of platform-based software

Well-designed platform software should be widely used in enterprise management system, campus management system, e-government, hospital management system and other industries. Enterprise management software sales and distribution management, production management, inventory and procurement management, customer relationship management, office automation, human resources management system can be fully integrated into a system, all enterprise resources (people, money, things) all share, to reduce the overall operating costs of enterprises.

In the campus management system, the General Affairs and Logistics Management, the educational administration, the Office automation, the registration and the school-leaving system can be set up as a system to realize the centralized management of the school and strictly control the expenditure and consumption. Hospital management system of fees and registration, financial management, hospitalization management, doctors station nurse station can be set as a system to achieve fast and convenient hospital management.

At the beginning of 2002, Gartner (ERP/MRPII), a pioneer in the development of future software architectures, considered platform software as the development trend of management software. At present, due to the advantages of platform-based software irreplaceable, SAP, Oracle and other foreign management software company's products have shifted to platform, many domestic management software developers are claiming to be strategic focus on platform software, even claiming that their products are platform-based products.

After entering the 2004, the first generation of ERP quietly subsided trend more obvious. The author believes that the real platform of the product should not be in the original curing software based on the transformation, because the original system using hard-coded way to achieve, can not be combined with the new platform-based software operating support system and application development tools, to achieve customer personalized requirements of the custom-free programming. The new platform-based product must have two basic elements to achieve fully customizable applications, rather than the so-called "two-time development" of the original system perimeter.

Because of the many advantages of platform software, many software companies are ready to develop similar products and are concerned about the issues that need to be noticed in product development. According to statistics, the Platform product research and development barrier has three aspects: first, the investment capital is big, the general phase of the product development at least 30 million yuan, and the completion of mature products need to invest nearly billion; second, the research and development cycle is long, it takes 2-3 years; third, the core technical barriers are high, requiring the collective participation of software technicians and management

With the development of China's software industry, domestic management software in the platform of software technology and products have been a great breakthrough, many of the process of platform software products have been able to keep pace with foreign software company's products, which will certainly bring greater benefits to many domestic enterprise users.

Disclaimer: Reprinted CIO ERA net (www.ciotimes.com)

The design and application prospect of platform-based software