Layered Architecture

The underlying Torq Framework architecture is based on five separate software layers. Each layer has a standard set of libraries that are used for building applications. Each layer only depends on the layers below it ensuring a consistent program structure.

Applications built using the Torq Framework can get a running jump on development by leveraging off of the framework at various levels within the application. The typical Application will need specific implementations of the higher level layers only e.g. the business domain layer, presentation layer and user interface layer.

Foundation Layer

The Foundation layer provides the base architecture for the framework and applications built with the framework. The functionality areas include:

• Additional meta-data concepts oriented towards being able to model business concepts more easily than with the standard .NET framework functionality.
  
• An object source abstraction which allows difference database and data persistence mechanisms to be plugged in.
  
• An Authorization system for identifying which users have access to which areas in a business domain.
  
• Abstractions of general Windows and .NET concepts that allow limit the coupling of application code to a particular implementation. This facilitates flexibility and automated testing.
  
• Extensions to the core .NET functionality that makes it easier to develop asynchronous programs.
  
• A variety of convenience classes to help in day to day programming.
  

Mapping Layer

Business Domain Layer

The Torq Framework includes a set of business domain classes that are common across multiple application domains. These include but are not limited to code for the following abstractions:

 

Party Person Organization	Place Region	Thing Vehicle Delivery	Time
Task	Document Attachment	Account Transactions	User Administrator
Phone	Address	Fax	Email
License	Passport	Characteristics

The business domain layer uses the Role pattern to allow the core domain objects to be able to be extended with additional functionality without modifying the core object’s code. For example, a person can take on multiple roles within a system. Example of roles people can play in a system include User, Administrator, Manager, Agent, Coordinator and other business domain specific roles. The Role pattern allows an Application to easily extend the Torq Framework for its needs without modifying the framework code.

The re-use of the business domain layer also extends to the presentation of the business objects. For example, the Torq Framework has a variety of graphical objects that present business objects to users and can be used to update the business objects.

An example of such a graphic object is the PartiesControl object. This object displays a list of parties (People and/or Organizations). It automatically adjusts its display to the type of people and organizations it is supplied. The tree view on the left adjusts based on the relationships between people and the organizations they are associated with. The window area on the right shows the selected party, all of their contact details, ID information and the roles they play in the current application.

All of this is done automatically and with knowledge of the extensions made by an Application beyond that provided by the Torq Framework. The graphical object shown above is based on Windows Forms graphics. There’s also a separate Web based user interface PartiesControl object in the framework:

The architecture of the business domain layer and its extensible structure allows us to leverage the Torq Framework in new Projects and Products without having to modify the existing framework code. This extensibility applies to the presentation and user interface layers as well.

Presentation Layer

The Presentation layer in the Torq Framework is a means of modeling user interface concepts without actually being tied to a particular user interface implementation. The classes in this layer can also be called a “view model” or a model of a view. It allows presentation oriented concepts to be implemented once and then re-used across products with different user interface front ends.

An example is the implementation of a Find dialog which needs to run in both a Windows application and a Web application. Rather than implementing the core Find logic multiple times, it is implemented once in the presentation layer with no specific graphic output – only information output. The presentation layer approach reduces the duplication of effort and encourages the re-use of software code. The underlying find dialog code is the same for both of the following user interface implementations (Windows Forms and Web).

User Interface Layer

The user interface is where the rubber hits the road as far as the users of a software system are concerned. It’s what people see the most and what they associate with a software system or product. The Torq Framework is structured so that the choice of user interface is a separate decision from the core implementation.

This approach allows a software application to be built with one user interface technology, but then be extended to use another without a major architectural change. Torq applications use a variety of .NET user interface technologies and the framework will evolve as the technology landscape evolves.

Windows Forms

A Windows Forms based user interface is a typical industry standard Microsoft Windows graphical application. The Windows Forms environment has the advantage of having a large number of third party components to leverage off of and produce highly functionality applications quickly.

Visual Web GUI

The Visual Web GUI (VWG) user interface framework is an innovative approach to developing Web Applications. Torq Software is excited about the prospects of this user interface framework as it provides a means for developing business web applications quickly and efficiently. It allows a web application to be developed in a similar way a Windows application is developed, but with all of the benefits of a Web deployment model. More information on the Visual Web GUI approach can be found at www.gizmox.com. The Torq Framework extends the VWG with standard business model user interfaces and integration with our Framework.

Reports

Reports are another means of providing a user interface into a software system. The Torq Framework supports integration with the Active Reports reporting package and includes a Word template based reporting system as an option. Other reporting destinations can easily be added as the underlying architecture has separated out the business model from the form of the user interface.

WPF and Silverlight

The user interface framework of choice for Microsoft .NET applications for the fore-seeable future is the Windows Presentation Framework or WPF. It is a highly advanced framework for developing user interfaces with strengths in the area of graphics animations and transitions. The Silverlight framework is a subset of WPF that can be run in a Web Browser.

Torq Software has invested heavily in WPF and Silverlight functionality going forward. The Torq Framework architecture is well suited to leveraging the strengths of both WPF and Silverlight.

A domain model is a conceptual model of the area of expertise or organizational system the software is being developed for. For a business owner, this could be a conceptual model of their business or a part of their business operations. It can take the form of a document, a series of diagrams, some scratchings on a whiteboard or a more formal definition in a modeling language such as UML. All people have domain models in their head for a whole bunch of different knowledge areas and expertise.

The power of Domain Driven Design comes from the alignment of the domain models in the heads of the various stakeholders of a software product or project. Aligning how the software developers, business owner and users of the software perceive and think of a system being automated by software allows the entire development and maintenance process to proceed more quickly and better equipped to satisfy the needs of everyone involved.

The language used when the different software product stake holders communicate subtley, but greatly, affects their interactions. The term ubiquitous language is used in DDD to describe the use of a consistent domain language between all of the stakeholders, software developers, end users, business management, business experts etc. Torq Software uses Domain Driven Design techniques in the development of the software products have created and maintain. An example of the use of DDD and ubiquitous language can be found in the Iris Debt Collection System design.

The concept of a debt collection Job was the central theme to the business operation, so this is the term we used in the software source code to label that software class. Similarly the terms Client, Agent, Agency, Client Contact and Tow Company were all in use by the debt collection industry the business deals with. These are directly used in the Iris product's source code which allows the software developers to associate software concepts with business concepts. It allows the developers to more effectively communicate with the users of the software. So rather than have a software jargon, we have a shared jargon that straddles the software development process and the debt collection domain (for this case).

An interesting variation in the DDD approach used was the naming of the Coordinator concept. The business didn't actually have an explicit name for the office staff that worked on debt collection jobs but were not actually field agents. We found that this role in the debt collection workflow was important enough to model it in software. The term Coordinator was used as the person involved coordinates the activities on large numbers of jobs. This isn't quite the text book approach of using language that is already in use in the business domain, but the additional term worked well. It is now in common use within the business at it puts a common sense label on a conceptual role they were already familiar with. We typically follow an approach such as Domain Driven Design because it provides significant value to the development process but aren't averse to tailoring the approach to different scenarios.

Some excellent books describing the Domain Driven Design approach are available:

	Applying Domain-Driven Design and Patterns: With Examples in C# and .NET ISBN: 0321268202 ISBN-13: 9780321268204 See Jimmy Nilsson's blog as well.
	Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software ISBN: 0321125215 ISBN-13: 9780321125217

In our opinion Software Development is an expensive exercise. This is balanced by the huge benefits that can arise when the right software is applied to an appropriate business or organizational context. Putting in a statement like "Software Development is expensive" doesn't help sell our services.

But... development software is expensive. It takes:

• Technical skill
• The ability to deal with immense complexity
• Significant time
• Attention to detail

Regardless, organizations around the world spend multiple billions of dollars every year on developing new software. They do this because:

•  The payoff in automating mundane repetitive tasks previously done by people is immense
•  Once software is developed, the costs to reproduce it are negligible.

It's this latter point that can really confuse people in how to deal with software development. Most people, in their daily lives, just deal with:

•   off-the-shelf, such as Microsoft Word
•   free software, such as the Linux operating system
•   free services, such as the Google search engine

The cost of these types of software, or the fact that they are free to the end-user, hides the expense of the initial software development and ongoing maintenance. Microsoft sells Microsoft Word for a few hundred dollars a copy because they sell in such high volumes. Google provides free search services, because they can get advertisers to pay. Open source software developers work on free software for a variety of reasons.

Our bottom line is that:

if you can get off-the-shelf software, free software or free services to achieve what you need, then... you don't need software development services

But...off the shelf, free software or free services doesn't always do exactly what your business or organization needs. This combined with the huge benefits software can provide; mean that software development can make financial sense for many businesses or organizations. If you have a scenario where benefits of automating your workflow potentially outweigh the cost of developing custom software then you should talk to us.

We believe that the use of Agile Principles in Software Development provides significant benefits to all the stakeholders in the development process. The core principles were set out by a group of software development luminaries whose goal is to uncover better ways of developing software. This is covered in the Agile Manifesto which can be found at www.agilemanifesto.org. These agile principles act as a practical pragmatic guide for how software development is performed. They promote the de-emphasis of aspects of the software development process that though important, can de-rail the actual end goal of working useful software.

It provides personal access to plant data for analysis and gaining insight to optimise production and maintenance. PlantVantage was born from the needs of the small to mid tier industrial production companies who wanted the functionality of a historian and analysis tools without paying “Enterprise” level pricing.

Features and Benefits

PlantVantage integrates with the existing control system for data capture and has the features you would expect in an industry standard historian and trending package. This includes user customisable trends, statistical analysis, export to MS Excel and a simple visual interface. It also has some more powerful features to make life easier for production and maintenance people.

Powerful Analysis

• Correlate as many points/tags/entities on trend page as you like
  
• Easily analyse trends with statistical tools 
  
• Automatically identify and analyse trends for specific plant alarms 
  
• Playback trends 
  
• Align and analyse trends with a realtime delay, side by side 
  
• Create new data trends from calculations on your existing plant data

Simple to Use

• Simple and intuitive graphical interface 
  
• Simple ‘select and copy’ of data into Excel for spreadsheet analysis/graphs
  
• Allows each user to customize their own individual pages to suite their needs
  

Easy Access

• Sits alongside your existing SCADA or Plant Historian
  
• Easy to deploy to users
  
• Concurrent licensing allows PlantVantage to be accessed by all operations and production personnel
  

Cost-effective

• Integrates with existing systems
  
• Flexibility to use Linux, Solaris or Windows operating systems to significantly reduce costs.
  
• Server based licensing.