AR System application components

This section introduces the main components of a   application.

• Form—The main  application component that users interact with is a form. Each form includes fields, which can be units of information (such as an employee's last name) or visual elements (such as lines or boxes). You can design different field arrangements (views) of forms for different user functions.
   Each data field on a form has a set of properties that define the size of the field, the type of data that the field stores, and any access permissions. Some fields don't contain data but instead organize data or improve the appearance of the screen: active link control fields (buttons and hotlinks), table fields, trim fields, and panel fields. Fields from existing forms can be combined into join forms.
   Adding fields to a form causes the  to create columns in a database table. When a user fills in the fields and saves the data, the system creates a request to track. In database terms, each request is a record.
   You can bundle related forms into an application. For example, a human resources application might include forms for basic employee data, health benefits, and salary information. You can deploy the application to multiple servers to make it accessible to employees in different locations. You can also display your application on the web to allow access from a browser on any platform, as shown in the following figure.
  
  

• Menu—Menus are lists that you create to guide the user in entering information in fields on forms. They can provide suggestions for entering data into a field, or can be mandated as the only possible choices. Menus can be:

  • Statically defined.
  • Dynamically built by querying other  database tables.
  • Read from text files written by other applications.
  • Created from SQL queries to external databases.

  A menu can contain all possible values for a field, or it can contain some possible values, enabling users to enter text that is not on the menu. You can design dynamic menus, which change their contents based on the data already entered in the form.

• Workflow—While forms provide the mechanism to structure data capture and menus offer options for specific field data, additional components (active links, filters, and escalations) act on the data to automate business processes, or workflow. These components trigger actions in response to execution options that you define. In , workflow generally refers to the operations triggered by these components, but  also addresses the broader meaning of workflow, which consists of the processes that your organization uses to run itself.
• Association—To create a relationship between two forms in , you can create an association in . These relationships are used in various BMC applications.

For more information, see these topics: