Work is afoot on this project, and we're moving forward for ivata masks v2.0. I've started a blog on JRoller to keep track of the latest project happenings, as they happen. This blog covers ivata Masks, ivata Groupware and ivata CMS.
ivata masks is now considered ready for production environments. Enjoy!
This release adds new features and makes the library generally easier to extend.
There is now improved debug logging throughout the library, using log4j. Maven compatibility has been upgraded to version 1.1 (will no longer work with lower version numbers). There is new field handing for password and long timestamp fields. Support has been added for a client session scope. Filter and listener interfaces on the query persistence interface now make it easier to implement flexible user rights system.
ivata masks is a library of routines developed in Java/JSP/Struts. They automatically create masks and lists, based on java reflection and settings specified in XML. This saves a huge amount of time.
Rather than developing input screens and lists for each value object class, you need to define just 2 screens - one for lists, the other for input masks. An XML file defines which fields should be displayed or filtered out in each, and the library automatically interrogates the value object classes to discover which fields are available for display. We use the Struts messages to automate the field labels, based on the field name as a key.
We used this approach to replace a system in development by a large UK retail bank. Before we applied this approach, the client had coded each input screen and list by hand. The unified approach dramatically reduced workload by a factor of several weeks.
ivata masks is made up of the following subprojects, with dependencies
as shown. At the core, the mask and
util libraries are independed of any user-interface
implementation - you could just as well use them to build traditional
GUI masks and lists (using Swing, for example), by creating a new
gui package which extends this base.
In addition to the Java subprojects shown below, there is also a jar
package called build which contains shared build
resources such as XSLT files.
ivata masks has been developed by ivata.
This library is released as open source for everyone to share under the terms of the GNU General Public license. To arrange different terms, or if you want to use ivata masks as part of a commercial product, please contact ivata.