mv.NET Architecture

mv.NET consists of three major components: Core Objects, Solution Objects and Adapter Objects.

Core Objects not only provides the underlying framework upon which all other mv.NET components are based, it also provides, in its own right, a wealth of developer centric features enabling the rapid creation of feature rich, high-performance applications using the powerful tools provided by Microsoft’s .NET environment. Core Objects has strong integration with Microsoft’s Visual Studio, allowing the developer to carry out virtually all aspects of application creation from within the Visual Studio environment. Each class within the Core Objects class library contains a range of interface members — methods, properties and events. It is by the use of these members that the developer is able to carry out a wide range of MultiValue database-related tasks within the.NET environment. Many of the features provided by these classes will be familiar to the MultiValue developer; in fact, wherever possible, Core Objects’ classes have been designed to mirror the traditional functionality provided by DataBASIC and other core MultiValue components. However, by virtue of the fact that the client/server architecture differs in a number of fundamental ways from the legacy green-screen application paradigm, mv.NET’s classes provide features that will be new to the MultiValue developer.

Adapter Objects is a full ADO.NET managed data provider implementation and provides a full read/write interface for MultiValue databases.  MultiValue data is dynamically normalized into ADO.NET datasets making this the way forward for true SQL-like application development and reporting, for example, using products like Crystal Reports. To further extend its ease of use, Adapter Objects provides optional support for the use of SQL syntax within Select, Update, Insert and Delete command objects.  Adapter Objects also provides exceptional flexibility when handling MultiValue data, offering a range of different strategies to suit a variety of application requirements.  Complementing this flexible MultiValue data handling is a powerful multivalue/subvalue filtering capability, allowing filtering of item data right down to subvalue level across multiple column selection criteria.  As a true ADO.NET provider, all datasets and datatables generated via Adapter Objects may be used with the standard .NET components, such as typed dataset generation and databinding.  Adapter Objects also utilizes Core Objects' advanced session management functionality, allowing rapid connect and disconnect of database sessions.

Solution Objects allows the developer to create a strongly-typed class-based (business objects) access layer to their MultiValue database.  It provides the complete spectrum of features required to do this -the design tools to create the defintion (entity model) of the access layer, the code generator to produce the access layer program code and the run-time support libraries.  Solution Objects brings a number of significant benefits to an organization looking to create .NET front-ends to their MultiValue database, including the encapsulation and abstraction of MultiValue knowledge into a industry standard access layer; reduced programming errors due to strong-typing of database access and Microsoft IntelliSense support; improved data interoperability via support for the Visual Studio DataSource interface and full support for .NET data binding.  The design-time tools integrate with the mv.NET Data Manager utility to provide a unified abilty to work on both database schema and the entity model representation of this schema within the same single environment.  A high degree of flexibility is provided to allow strong control over the exposure of sensitive data, with the ability to create multiple customized or tightly focused access layers from a single entity model.

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