Servoy Developer

Servoy Developer is used for creating applications which are hosted by Servoy Server and can be deployed via: Servoy Smart Client, Servoy Headless Client or Servoy Web Client -- all from a single code base.

What is Servoy Developer?
At it's core -- Servoy Developer is a powerful graphical user interface (GUI) based IDE (Integrated Development Environment) consisting of a user interface builder; a JavaScript programming editor; and a debugging environment. You can finally create real Java applications without having to learn Java. You can also connect to one or many SQL databases (on your local network, across the WAN or over the Internet) from multiple vendors and even join data in different vendor's databases (i.e. Customer in Sybase with Orders in Oracle) without knowing any SQL.

How Does Servoy Developer Work?
You can build your solutions by visually dragging controls (fields, buttons, labels, tabpanels, portals, JavaBeans, Java applets, etc.) on to a form. Forms can be used for entering data, creating sophisticated reports, rendering HTML reports, running SQL queries and more.

Database Is Included
For your convenience, Sybase Adaptive Server Anywhere (Sybase ASA) is included and can be installed with Servoy Developer -- so you don't have to install your own SQL database. Of course, if you already have an existing backend database, you can create a connection in Servoy Developer, and begin accessing the database immediately. You are never locked in to a single database or operating system platform.

No Database Vendor Lock-in
For example, you can develop your solution using Mac OS X with Sybase ASA as your database and instantly deploy to your customer that is running Oracle on Unix -- without writing any additional code or modifying your solution in any way. In fact, if you add columns to a particular set of tables, when the solution is imported into Servoy Server (via a browser), Servoy will automatically add any required table columns for you automatically. Now that's flexibility.

Secure by Design
Developing your applications with Servoy Developer means that they will be secure. Servoy features two levels of security: one at the database connection level, and a second level of security at the solution level. Servoy respects the uername/password security settings at the database connection level. So if the username/password privileges only allow reading the data -- the users of your solution will not be able to add, edit, or delete data (even if they wanted to). Servoy Clients communicate with the Servoy Server via SSL-encrypted Java byte-code -- never in plain text.

You can optionally add another layer of security at the solution level. You can create security groups (manually or programatically) and users, then assign users to be part of one or more groups. Then you can assign priviliges to groups (add, edit, delete). You can even hide and/or disable individual elements on individual forms on a group-by-group basis. And if that's not enough -- Servoy has a built-in audit trail (called Tracking) that will automatically track all inserts, updates and delete on a table-by-table basis including: user name, user id, date and time, data value before the change, data value after the change, the primary key of the record, name of the solution, name of the form and name of the database connection.

Fully Event Driven
Servoy is a fully event-driven environment which means that you can attach scripts to many events to update the user interface dynamically at runtime. A partial list of events include: onLoad (form), onShow (form), onHide (form), onEditStart (form), onRecordSelection (form), onSaveData (form), onFocusGained (field), onFocusLost (field), onDataChange (field), onAction (field/button), and more. You can also change the properties of objects at runtime: size, location, font, color (foreground and background), enable/disable (grey out), tooltip text, etc. This allows you to create a dynamic, flexible solution that can enforce any business logic you can dream up.

No File Format to Corrupt
With Servoy there is no physical disk format. Instead, all of the data about your solution is stored in a SQL database (any SQL database you choose). Servoy controls only the interface into the data -- Servoy is not a database so your data will never be corrupted if the application is forced to quit.

Low Bandwith = Low Latency
Servoy Clients communicate with Servoy Server via SSL-encrypted and compressed Java byte-code. The Smart Client draws the user interface and then communicates with the Server to access the data and draw it on the form. This means that once the form is loaded, performance is very fast even over long distances (Server in New York, client in California or Server in Europe, client in Canada). Servoy uses a "lazy load" technique -- so only the descriptions of the forms that are used on the Client is send over the network -- greatly reducing network "chatter."

Localization Tools Included
Whether you conduct business in English, Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Hebrew or any other language, you can develop your Servoy solution once -- and serve users in different languages simultaneously. Without re-coding your application. All you have to do is to design your solution using i18n strings (i18n = internationalization) -- with just the text strings translated into the local language. Servoy will then automatically load the correct strings based on the user's language preference. That's it. No other configuration is necessary. In addition, because all of your translated strings are stored in an ordinary SQL table -- you can re-use your translations across multiple solutions.

Enforce Consistency Through Styles
Servoy has built-in style support. You can create as many different styles as you want and apply them on a form-by-form basis. This will save you loads of development time -- and is much faster than manually applying color, font, alignment, border properties, etc. to every element on every form individually. Of course you have the flexibility to override an element's style at any time - but by using style sheets you can dramatically increase the consistency and speed of development (not to mention solutions that load much faster in the client). Like almost every aspect of Servoy -- you're in full control of your styles. You can change the definition of a style at any time -- and every solution in your repository that uses that style will be automatically updated. You can interactively change the style and see the changes in designer mode immediately after saving your style.

Easily Extensible
No two companies conduct business the same way -- so your development and deployment environment needs to be flexible in terms of extensibility. Servoy has full support for JavaBean, Java applets, and it's own 100% plug-in API. Our plug-in API allows you to integrate, customize and extend the functionality of the Servoy application in whatever way you need. Plus, all JavaBeans, applets and plugins are stored on the server and not the client -- ensuring that you only have to update a plug-in, applet or bean in a single location and not on each individual client.

With Servoy Developer, creating user interfaces and reports for SQL databases has never been faster or easier!