Transaction Engine 3 features

We've tried to improve a lot MX Kollection 3, especially regarding the Dreamweaver integration and the generated code.

Dreamweaver user interfaces

• Improved User Interfaces
  · The user interfaces have been re-designed from scratch to provide an even easier way of doing specific tasks.
  · Contextual help messages in each interface - interface controls benefit now from special help messages, guiding you through the process and minimizing your errors.
  · Nice error handling - empty fields are highlighted in red to help you understand what's wrong.
  · Automatic tab selection on error - when an error happens in another tab of a multiple tab interface, it is automatically focused.
• Real Wizards and Tabbed interfaces to guide developers
  · Common operations performed in MX Kollection are simplified with the wizard interfaces.
  · The wizards explain all steps to the developer and provide a significant improvement in the user experience.
  
  
  
  · Complex server behaviors also present controls in tabs that group the elements to ease the learning curve.
• User Interface Persistence
  · Once you have configured an interface, MX Kollection 3 will remember your data and the second time you open it (or a related interface) it will be pre-filled to simplify your work. The persistence layer will remember the preferred label for a field, the Submit As and Display As values, and it will also automatically create the dependent recordsets when a Dynamic Menu is used.

Productivity features

• Transparent trigger association to transactions
  · To simplify your work, when adding a trigger on a page, it is automatically registered to the eligible transactions. Triggers have a default priority and name.
• Better license and version management
  · Improved Upgrade Engine – to help you update a site with all its include files.
  · Online and offline software activation – to help you manage your InterAKT product licenses.
  · Check InterAKT server for updated versions – helping you stay up to date.
• InterAKT Dynamic Data
  · Allow selection of a Dynamic Data element, and converts it into a simple InterAKT markup language ({Recordset.field}, {now}, etc). This allows a server technology independent naming convention for dynamic variables, helping you do complex things without learning programming.
• Control Panel to edit your settings - Use this centralized control panel to configure your site for optimum usage:
  · Date settings
  · Language settings
  · Debugging mode
  · Update includes folder
  · Login settings
  · Define a preferred image library
  · E-mail settings
  · CSS Skins
  
  · User interface persistence and database caching
  · Product upgrades
  · MX Kollection Favorites

Improvements in the generated code and libraries

• Improved Transaction Engine to support new features
  · Insert into multiple tables.
  · Retrieve the auto inserted id in a table.
  · Edit multiple records at once.
  · Better trigger registration to a transaction.
• Solid APIs for most common server side tasks
  · Image manipulation API (resize)
  · Shell execution API
  · File and folder management API
• Object oriented generated code
  · In order to achieve the clearest code possible, in MX Kollection 3 all the generated code in page is object oriented. Thus we allow you to change it easily. You can now group transaction and triggers in the same code block to allow easy code reading.
• CSS forms that match W3C standards
  · Cleaner code, easier to change.
  · WAI Compliant (Web Accesibility Standards - read more on the W3C site)
  · Set custom labels for the Insert and Update so you can rename your labels for the Insert form in order to best fit the context of your website.
• Triggers associated to multiple transactions
  · The new Transaction Engine allows you to associate a trigger with multiple transaction. (Eg. form validation trigger associated to both update and insert transactions on a NeXTensio generated page).
• Conditional triggers
  · Run a trigger only if a specified condition has been validated, to accommodate custom application logic.

Intelligent error handling

• Improved error handling
  · Two types of errors – general and per field.
  · MX Kollection will show the error on the top of the page if anything goes wrong then auto focus a specific field if it can detect it.
  · Use InterAKT Dynamic Data in your errors: "The value {name_nam} is incorrect".
• Development Mode with detailed errors
  · Detailed error reporting in Development mode.
• Production Mode for live sites
  · Easy to understand and simpler errors in Production
  · Log the full error messages in Production mode (in file or send by e-mail)
• Transaction Engine execution trace
  · This feature will present the exact execution trace and show the step where the trace has been broken. It will show all the page execution flow and highlight the problematic section.
• Knowledge base for developer errors
  · InterAKT provides a knowledge base for development errors in which errors will be documented by our support specialists. Once you get an error on page just press the Need Help button and receive instant advice regarding your error.
  · Local Server Configuration sent to the knowledge base – once you press the Need Help button your local server configuration is sent to the InterAKT Knowledge base. This will ensure that InterAKT specialists can duplicate your settings and try to get the same error, then propose a solution that molds perfectly into your structure.

Dreamweaver integration

• Insert Record Form Wizard
  · The wizard adds an HTML form and an Insert Transaction server behavior to your page. The form objects are laid out in a basic table, which you can customize by using the Dreamweaver page design tools.
  · Lots of usability changes to improve the form generation flow.
  · Ability to add recordsets directly from the wizards, for Dynamic Menu fields.
  · InterAKT database convention detection and stripping of the ending “_usr” when suggesting labels.
  · Filter Submit As menu depending on the Display As selection.
• Update Record Form Wizard
  · The wizard adds an HTML form and an Update Transaction server behavior to your page. The form objects are laid out in a basic table, which you can customize by using the Dreamweaver page design tools.
  · Lots of usability changes to improve the form generation flow.
  · Allow to add recordsets directly from the wizards, for Dynamic Menu fields.
  · InterAKT database convention detection and stripping of the ending “_usr” when suggesting labels.
  · Filter Submit As menu depending on the Display As selection.
• Insert Into 2 tables Wizard
  · The purpose of this wizard is to allow the simultaneous insert of data into two linked tables. The tables must be in a master-detail relationship. The wizard will add two insert forms into the page, one for the master table, and the other for the detail table. The field containing the link between the tables is automatically filled by the wizard.
  · Unifies two full insert wizards.
• Custom Form Wizard
  · Create your custom forms that will help you insert/edit and delete database information.
  · Specify your own fields and custom SQL query to execute, using the InterAKT dynamic data language “Insert into table values ({id},{name})”.
• Conditional regions
  · You can show a page section if a specific condition is met.
  · Use simple boolean expression or complex ones.
  · Decide to show an “ELSE” section for a conditional region.
• Insert Transaction – inserts a set of values into a database table
• Update Transaction – update a set of values into a database table
• Delete Transaction – delete a set of values from a database table
• Create custom transaction
• Redirect to page trigger
  · This server behavior allows the user set up a redirect to a certain page, after a certain condition has been met, or a transaction has finished executing.
• Custom triggers - User defined functions that implement specific application login
• Sort triggers
  · Allow centralized management of all the triggers registered to one transaction. You can define the order in which they will be executed by simply moving the triggers up or down in a list.
• Throw Error Triggers - Throw an error if a specific condition is not met (for example when passwords don't match).
• Add transaction fields - This trigger allows the adding of fields that do not appear in the form on page, but are taken into account when inserting the new record into the table (as they are present in the database).

Security

• Smart protection against SQL injection by escaping characters when building the SQL queries

Usability

• Set default values and settings for the Insert or Update form.
• Highlight fields with error and auto focus them.
• Allow usage of HTML tags in the error message to emphasize a term.

Database integration

• Include a database cache layer in Dreamweaver - This will minimize the server calls to retrieve the database metadata when loading user interfaces.
• Multiple database compatibility: MySQL, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, Sybase, Sybase SQL Anywhere, Informix, PostgreSQL, FrontBase, Interbase (Firebird and Borland variants), Foxpro, Access, ADO and ODBC.

Standard compliance

• Forms created using CSS styles.
• WAI compliant generated code (Web Accessibility Initiative).
• W3C compliant generated code.

Compatibility and internationalization

• Improved internationalization features - Set database and screen date formats and have the dates converted behind the scenes.
• Choose one of the language packs for the error messages - It is now easier to translate and customize the language settings, date format and error messages. The resource files that contain these messages are placed on disk in includes/resources/ folders.
• Multiple browser compatibility: MSIE 5.5 or more, Netscape 6.0 or more, Opera 7 or more, Firefox, Safari, Mozilla, Camino.
• Support for the ColdFusion, ASP_VBScript, PHP_MySQL and PHP_ADODB server models.
• Works on Windows and MAC.

Documentation

• Integrated Dreamweaver help (search, index, glossary).
• Step by step tutorials with real-life applications.
• Comprehensive user manual.