Saturday, July 26, 2008
Quiz made easy
I just finished integrating the Jetfire Quiz into the system. The quiz that I wrote using the Jetfire scripting language was quite simple:
- What is your name? __________
- Are you over 18? (yes/no)
- Select an age category: 18 to 25, 26-35, 36 – 45, over 45
- How often do you go dancing in a year? ___
From a code perspective, the Quiz is a set of Questions and Answers. Answers may be text, numeric, yes/no, a selection from a list, date and time, and duration.
A new Web Control is provided (in the website) to iterate over the list of Questions and Answers, providing the user with the ability to input answers. The quiz can be viewed using this custom control.
The real reason for this blog is to brag about just how simple it is to write your own Quiz. My friend, Mo, wrote a quiz in 30 minutes this morning. Mo owns a Print shop in Ottawa, has a Computer Science degree from over 20 years ago and hasn't programmed in a whole lot of years. Mo is a smart guy, but not a programmer. He needed a little bit of help with syntax, but since he uses Excel extensively, he was a natural to write his first Jetfire workflow.
Since I hit him cold with "you are designing a quiz right now", most of the time was spent formulating the questions and answers about the travel quiz that he wanted to write. His travel quiz includes the following questions:
- What was your favorite destination? ________
- Select your Sex: Male, Female
- Select a destination: North America, Europe
- Select an age category: Under 18, 18 – 35, 36- 50, over 50
- How often do you travel in a year? ____
Less than five minutes later, I had the privilege of being the first to fill in his quiz.
Sound like fiction? With Jetfire, you upload the Jetfire code and start using it immediately. This is possible because Jetfire is a scripting language and re-uses the Question and Answer Web Control described above.
Labels: Jetfire
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Hello World with Jetfire
Well what do we mean by a lot simpler. Well lets look at "Hello World".
namespace test
{
workflow HelloWorld
{
DateTime creationTime = DateTime.Now;
public string Hello
{
get{return "This workflow was created at:" + creationTime.ToString();}
}
}
}On the surface it looks almost like C#. The only significant difference is that 'class' has been replaced by 'workflow'. Other than that it is valid C# code.
So what is the difference? Why bother with Jetfire? Well the big difference is that Jetfire really starts where C# ends. For example, once a Jetfire instance of the HelloWorld object is created it is persistent until it is deleted. That is why there is a time stamp in this example so you could see when each instance was created. Try it for yourself.
In C# to make an object persistent you need to write code to save it to database or a file. Yes, you can serialize the object; however then serialization breaks if you change the code, and so on. With Jetfire there is nothing more to do. The objects and code are persitent. When the code changes a new version is automatically created.
This is part of goal of having the programmer focus on the problem, not the programming infrastructure. Hopefully the "HelloWorld" example gives some introductory insight to the features of Jetfire.
Labels: Jetfire, persistence
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Jetfire is born
Labels: Jetfire
Jetfire debut at Ottawa Demo Camp
John and Charlie present Jetfire Workflows to an Ottawa developer audience. (See FAQ at http://Jetfire.ca/pages/JetfireFAQ.aspx for more info.)
The demo showed a DVD Tracking application. DVD's are added to Jetfire and tracked by Home, On Loan, Lost and Dead states. Commands, e.g. Lost, Found, Died) and Properties (On Loan To, Loan Timestamp, Returned Timestamp, and Lost Timestamp) are displayed on a general Web Demo available to ALL Jetfire workflows.
The Jetfire code, written in a C#,Java-like language was developed by John and Charlie at TrackerRealm. The language is workflow specific and makes it quick and easy to write workflows.
Demo key figures include:
- Multi-language strings (see English and Swedish-Chef instructions)
- Command Method and Property filtering by state (only see what you need to see)
- Change state (uses keyword: 'enterstate')
- Enter 'On Loan To' name causes state change, On Loan To Timestamp to be automatically updated
Bottom line: Comments like "Is that all the code there is?" tells me that we are on the right track.
Test Drive Jetfire yourself at http://jetfire.ca/Pages/JetfireDownload.aspx
The DVD workflow (100 lines of code) is shown at http://jetfire.ca/Code/Apps/DVDInventory.txt.Labels: Jetfire
Friday, March 16, 2007
What is Workflow EcoSystem?
What is clear is that to use workflows as sucessful automation tool a complete ecosystem is required. Our view is that a complete workflow ecosystem consists of 5 key components.
5 Key Components of a Workflow Ecosystem
- Workflow Designer
- User Interface
- Data Persistence Layer
- Data Report Generator
- Workflow Engine
A white paper, Attributes of a Complete Workflow Eco-System, has been put together that describes what attributes are required of each of the key components.
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