To better understand the benefits of an application created with the 42windmills platform, let’s map out a real-world example of creating entities and relationships for a fictional property management firm called 42Towers.

Situation:
42Towers manages 15 apartment buildings. The apartment buildings range in size from 25 to 75 apartments (1-2-3 bedrooms). As part of the rental process, each prospective tenant must complete an application form and submit to a credit check (tenant is one that pays rent to use an apartment). After receiving credit approval, all of the tenants sharing an apartment (roommates) sign a lease contract. 42Towers needs an application to manage its current tenants and track potential tenants.

designing the rental app

Part 1: Overview

This first tutorial shows you the completed generated web application without any coding.
In the other tutorials we will explain how to create this application step by step.

Part 2: New Application

What would happen if we just create a new application called 42Towers and then hit the ‘publish’ button?
See this tutorial for the first step towards the complete working web application.

Part 3: Adding Entities

Entities are the key items of your application.
Based on the description of 42Towers, we created an initial design in which 42Towers would use the following entities:

Building, Apartment, Lease, Lease application, Contact, Opportunity.

Part 4: Adding Relations

An entity relationship defines how 2 entities interact with each other.
Unlike a traditional database, in which you might configure primary and foreign keys to manage data relationships,
you use relationships to manage how data interacts in the system metadata.

This metadata design gives you the opportunity to customize and manage the data relationships easily without having to touch the underlying system data (and database keys) in MS SQL Server.

Part 5: Creating Forms

By default for every new entity a standard form will be available.
This tutorial will show you how you can extend a form with attributes.

Part 6: Creating Grids

By default for every new entity a standard grid will be available.
This tutorial will show you how you can extend a grid with multiple columns.

Part 7: Creating the Ribbon

The ribbon is formed as a panel that houses the command buttons and icons, organizes commands as a set of tabs, each grouping relevant commands.Each application can have a different set of tabs which expose the functionality that application offers. Most of you will be familiair with the ribbon as it is used in all Microsoft Office applications.

Within each tab, various related options may be grouped together in Sections.

The Ribbon is designed to make the features of your application more discoverable and accessible with fewer mouse clicks.