System Design Principles

Existing Conditions

• ProCash & Landev are "black boxes" with no design commitments except the language APL.
• We have several years of experience and knowledge of several organizations and persons who have tools and objects which may be of value to us. These include APL2000, Eric Lescasse, Adrian Smith and Bill Parke.
• We anticipate that at some point we will not be the owners of this venture. We feel strong obligation to ensure that our systems are well documented and that continuity in the development process is provided for.

Market Considerations

• The Clients who can pay us best have enterprise solutions which are often internet based. They will want the easiest possible connection between their networks and our facility.
• Clients will want to see their information in their formats. One of the keys to our success will be highest possible level of freedom for formatting information. We hope that our efficiency for creating new formats can be so great that we can build new formats on spec.

Programming Efficiency & Maintenance

• It might be said that we are building a "user shell" for use of the "black boxes". There may be several versions of the "user shell" to provide for use from different environments. We will need to establish priorities for the development of alternative versions of the "user shell", but each will be designed with an eye to it being part of a family of "user shells".
• We will be object oriented for maximum possible efficiency, reuse of code and ease of maintenance.
• We will use existing objects whereever possible, whether they are in apl, active X, dll's, or whatever.

Critical Design Decisions

A scripting language (yet to be designed) will be the key to how we relate the myriad of possible forms our users will desire with our generic black box. The scripting language must be independent of any user interface platform. We are likely to implement it in Excel, javascript/html, and Lescasse Objects.
• We will be single tracked as much as we can because of the efficiency of working that way.