If you’re an ISV building a new cloud application raises a lot of questions: what tooling will I use? How much flexibility is required in the future? How about security and role management? How do I connect to other systems? Most questions are not about the application-to-be but about the ‘plumbery code’ . The 42windmills platform has all the plumbery code already in place. Start thinking about the functionality you need because this is all you should worry about.
Click here to see the Application Designer features
Extension points
Instant, easy to use, data abstraction layer
No plumbing code, no more tedious writing of CRUD statements. Just enter your model in the designer and all entities are there for you to work with. The database including all stored procedures is instantly created for you. Easy to understand functions for conditionally loading collections of your entities and traversing across relations.
Custom properties and methods
Developers are completely free to extend the entity classes by adding custom properties and methods (both static and instance) . Because we use partial classes, you can even adjust your model in the designer and regenerate the solution without losing any of your custom code.
Events for loading, saving and deleting of entities
Add logic that is executed whenever an entity is saved, deleted or loaded (both before and after the physical database operations). You can also cancel events if certain requirements aren’t met and pass messages back to the GUI layer. Take a look at our tutorial about checking a webservice before saving a record.
Create buttons or popups in the GUI that execute your code
You can add buttons in the application Ribbon that will execute any code you want when a user clicks on it.
Add a popup in the designer and the downloaded solution has a standard .ascx control for you to fill with whatever code you like and a button for (conditionally) showing it.
Custom form sections
You can extend the forms with custom sections (generated as normal .ascx controls) containing whatever functionality you desire. Take a look at our Google Maps or Twitter tutorials to see how easy it is to implement these.
Connect any application to your 42Windmills application using our webservice
A webservice is generated, based on your model, that exposes all CRUD operations to other applications (if they have the correct credentials). You could also add your own webservice (asmx or WCF) to the solution if that is what you need.
Source control aware
The generator is source control aware (svn) and will update to your latest check in before regenerating the application and commit it back afterwards. For instance, when you are working on your solution and discover an essential relationship between two entities is missing, you can add the relation in the designer and publish your new model. As soon as the generation process has completed, you can update your solution from svn and continue developing using your newly created relation.
Model your cloud application using only industry standards mainly from the Microsoft stack. We can provide full .Net source code of your application for maximum flexibility. If needed, custom code can be added using Microsoft Visual Studio. Shorten your time to market; improve product quality and save on costs and knowledge.
