AR System application components
AR System is a robust application that caters to multiple requirements of an enterprise. The following table shows some key components in AR System:
Action | Reference |
|---|---|
Learn about Forms, which is the main AR System application component through which the users interact with AR System. | |
Learn how you can use workflows in AR System to automate your company's processes through the use of active links, filters, and escalations. | |
Understand how to capture information in AR System forms by using fields in the forms. | |
Learn how to use associations to establish relationships between entries in two AR System forms to support referential integrity, cascade deletes, and archiving related entries. |
High-level overview of Developer Studio components
- Form—The main AR System 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.
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.
Each form contains fields. Some fields, known as data fields, capture a certain type of information, such as a user name or problem details, and have their own set of rules about who can view or modify that information. Some fields can have attached menus that help users fill in the form. - Fields — Adding fields to a form causes the AR System server 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.
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 AR System 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 AR System, workflow generally refers to the operations triggered by these components, but AR System 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 AR System, you can create an association in Developer Studio. These relationships are used in various BMC applications.