http://www.eluxexchange.com

http://www.iluxcars.com

A few interesting ideas came out of the building of this application. Perhaps the most significant is the addition of what we are calling “TypedMappers.” A TypedMapper is a helpful, extrememly lightweight type-safe wrapper class around a NetQuarry Mapper object.

You typically use a TypedMapper as a helper class in an extension. You can create a TypedMapper and attach it to the sender (IMapper) of the event or you can use the TypedMapper derivative to create a new mapper – either for the purpose of creating a new row or reading/updating an existing one. Connecting a TypedMapper via one of the constructors or TypedMapper.Attach is very inexpensive and generally a safer way to work with a mapper.

The TypedMapper is an abstract base class, which means that you have to use our generator to generate derived classes that wrap your mappers. The ONLY potential drawback to using a TypedMapper derivative vs. the Mapper as is is that you will need to update (re-generate) the classes as you make metadata changes. On the applications that we (NetQuarry) are personally managing we are putting the generation code after we save the metadata and check-in the class file. We are recomending that you keep the generated classes more or less stand-alone (e.g. in its own assembly) and without any dependencies on other code.

The help is updated (NetQuarry Help) if you want to see code samples–Search for TypedMapper.

About NetQuarry

NetQuarry develops and licenses the NetQuarry Enterprise Application Platform. The NetQuarry platform helps professional software development teams develop significantly better enterprise and hosted applications.

NetQuarry is privately held. For more information, call (714) 881-4574, email info@netquarry.com, or visit our website at www.netquarry.com.

One of the more interesting aspects of this site is that unlike the default user interface this site is NOT using frames. What we did was add a feature to a page based on the Wizard Template that allows you to specify a header and footer “renderer” component.

Mission Pharmacal has representatives that attend approximately 100 “medical meetings” a year on behalf of the company. A medical meeting is effectively a trade show where Mission displays, explains, and generates leads on their pharmaceutical products. During the course of a meeting, attendees of the meeting can register at the mission display (booth) to request more information. This data (attendee demographics), is sent to Mission post-meeting in a somewhat standardized format.

Original Process

The original process involved a manual import of the post-meeting data into a Microsoft Excel format. Next, a mail merge was used to generate mailing labels for each of the attendees. The labels were affixed to a thank you letter that included a response card that the attendee could send
back to request samples or more information. When the response card was returned, a separate Mission employee would manually key the responses, including all demographic information, into a Microsoft Access Database. Periodically, the names and their responses from the
response card were exported and printed in a tabular format. This final report was then sent to the customer service department for order fulfillment.

There were several problems with this process. First, it was extremely time consuming and error prone, requiring interaction with at least 3 different applications to manage a single meeting. Second, there was no way to track the fact that attendees can and do attend multiple meetings, which meant that Mission was unable to capitalize on this information. Finally, the process of matching an attendee to an assigned account required a looking into Mission’s SFA system, a step that was impossible due to access and license issues.

Problems Solved

The new software consolidates all of the original processes into a single web interface. From one application, one can enter information about the meeting, import attendees, export labels, manage response cards, and export fulfillment information for customer service. In addition,
the attendees are matched against the Mission Sales Force Automation system and notification is sent to the correct sales representatives of the fact that one of their accounts (called “professionals”) has attended the meeting.

How it was done

Using the NetQuarry platform and one developer, a complete, enterprise-class application was delivered to Mission in a remarkably short amount of time.

The entire process from initial discussions and analysis to running implementation took place in two and one-half days. Of this time, approximately one day was spent on analysis of the problem and existing systems (the SFA system) and one-half day was spent dealing with deployment and testing on Mission’s server.

The application includes rich import and export facilities, manages more than a dozen functionally rich web-based forms, and provides Mission
with a single application to manage all of their medical meetings. Again, all completed in less than three days.

The key to this success was the NetQuarry platform. Using the NetQuarry Studio, a single developer produced a complete application in less than three days.

About NetQuarry

NetQuarry is the Enterprise Application Platform for Microsoft .NET.

The platform is comprised of pre-built software, metadata and tools designed to help professional software teams develop significantly
better enterprise and hosted business applications. Developers using NetQuarry will deliver everything faster (less time and manpower equals less cost):

• Rapid Prototypes (in as little as one day)
• Functional applications that perform like highly mature ISV solutions
• Continuous, quality improvements and iterations
• Agile response to the reality of changing requirements

The NetQuarry platform is not a code generator. Rather, it is a declarative framework that provides a foundation of deep functionality common to all enterprise and hosted applications, including data binding, database virtualization, OS-virtualization, searching, filtering, user interface, and role-based security.

Today’s dynamic business environments demand a great deal from developers and their managers. Rapid, agile, iterative development allows developers to incorporate frequent feedback from end users, realizing that successful applications are constantly refined, changing rapidly to meet the needs of the enterprise.

Making agile development successful requires advanced software infrastructure and disciplined methodologies. Infrastructure should be
designed to facilitate iterative development, producing quality applications.

Our Value Proposition is simple: Higher quality business applications delivered in a fraction of the time.

For more information, visit http://www.netquarry.com or contact us via email: info@netquarry.com.