DataPipe Core Technology

DataPipe is based on .NET technology plus additional functionality designed into the system "from the ground up."

The client (presentation) and middle (application server) tiers of DataPipe are written in Microsoft Managed Code. As such they require the .NET Framework. The client portion can be run as a .NET Windows executable. It is a .NET Managed User Control that can run within a .NET Windows executable. While at first glance this may seem to imply that client changes would need to be deployed manually to all clients, such is not the case. As discussed later in this document, there are numerous deployment options that eliminate the need to deploy updates to every machine that runs DataPipe. DataPipe offers the best of both worlds: easy deployment and a rich user experience. 

The client communicates to the middle tier via HTTP using DataPipe Web Services packaged in SOAP messages. The application tier requires Internet Information Server (IIS), which processes and returns Web Service requests. Depending on the deployment model, IIS may also serve as the deployment mechanism. Because HTTP is a stateless protocol and DataPipe needs to maintain state information (e.g. users have a session duration and can time-out) we developed the DataPipe User Manager. The User Manager is a Windows Service that resides on a server somewhere (typically it would be the application server) and manages currently logged in user information. 

There can only be one copy of the User Manager, as there is only one set of users per DataPipe system. By default the User Manager is assumed to be on the application server. In a Web Farm scenario each of the web servers needs to know where the User Manager is. This is easily accomplished by specifying the IP address and port of the machine that is running the DataPipe User Manager in a configuration file on each machine in the Web Farm.  

The middle tier (IIS) Web Services talk to the data tier via a .NET Managed Provider. The DBMSs currently supported are SQL Server, Oracle and IBM’s DB2.

Capabilities of interest to the technically-minded include:

• Database Independence - support for SQL Server, Oracle and DB2, with the same functionality in all relational DBMSs;

• Web and/or Windows Functionality - run DataPipe as a desktop Windows application or an IE-based Intranet application on a user-by-user basis

• Centralized Updates - DataPipe's "auto-deploy" mechanism allows automatic updating of users' forms and programs from a centrally located repository

• Performance Monitoring - Monitoring tools built in to DataPipe allow IT and other specialists to measure system performance so adjustments can be made to optimize performance

• Bandwidth Conservation - DataPipe caches forms and data to minimize round trips from the desktop PC to the servers

• Scalability - DataPipe is designed to run on a single server or multiple, distributed servers (a "Web Farm") As the customer's needs grow. DataPipe customers include small organizations with a single site and a few hundred employees to multi-national corporations with hundreds of thousands of employees located around the world

• Customization - We recognize that a form that works "out of the box" for one customer may not be optimized for another customer or even another user. DataPipe's Form Editor allows customers to change forms to control their layout, required and validated fields, visible information - even the language and font an individual user sees - in a way that usually preserves changes across software updates.