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Veriquant Framework Overview
The Veriquant Framework is an end-to-end,
n-tier development platform that provides a complete service infrastructure for
internet-based data management applications, managing everything from the database
to the user’s screen. On the host side the Framework displaces web servers such
as Apache and IIS and, in addition, provides a rich platform for application servers.
On the client side the Framework displaces web browsers of all kinds, providing
instead a smart client service infrastructure. The Framework provides, in other
words, whatever it takes for the many parts of an internet application to communicate,
interact with databases, invoke methods, deploy updates and organize and display
information.
At the peak of the Framework’s pyramid
of services stands an array of services supporting what is obscurely known in the
industry as EAV/CR. This is a system of storing, linking,
querying, searching, navigating and presenting data in a way that so homogenizes
every data point and association as to reduce by a hundred-fold the time that a
developer would need to create applications otherwise requiring a nasty and huge
database schema. It simplifies what would otherwise be horrendously complicated
to design, build, test, debug and use. The Framework certainly supports any horrendous
design, but with EAV/CR, a radical simplicity and power are
available.
With EAV/CR
and with all the lower-level services provided by the Framework, everything is defined,
managed, and controlled by metadata. This includes communication, packaging and
unpackaging data streams, interaction with databases and even presentation. Applications
are configured more than written. Again this vastly simplifies program development,
maintenance and deployment.
Because the Framework uses smart clients,
much of the work typically allocated to web application servers is instead allocated
to client computers, harnessing power typically wasted in conventional browser-based
applications. Each client computer is a data processor in its own right. No time
or resources are wasted sending presentation instructions (such as HTML) to the
client, which it must then parse and render. No time or resources are wasted transmitting
Java Script, which must then be seated and interpreted. Servers and bandwidth and
air time are freed of the encumbrance of maintaining client computer program state.
Demands on infrastructure resources are cut to a fraction of that required by conventional
web application technology.
Data that is sent over the wire is
dense, binary and unencumbered with metadata. This increases, in sheer communication
efficiency alone, the responsiveness and speed of Framework applications by a factor
of at least four.
Why did we do it? What did we gain
by doing away with the established web servers like IIS and Apache and with browsers
such as Internet Explorer and with all the text-based protocols by which those things
talk to each other? We gained speed, efficiency, responsiveness, simplicity, development
cost reduction, database convenience, the ability to manage hugely complicated and
changing data structures and a many-fold reduction in the amount of server hardware
and bandwidth required to drive internet applications.
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