Overview for Omnis Studio v 6.1

Omnis Studio is one of the most powerful and flexible Cross Platform, Rapid Application Development (RAD) tool available today.

Omnis Studio allows independent or team-based developers to create enterprise or web applications for companies and organisations of any size. Omnis Studio v4.3.1 has 3 Editions Standard, Enterprise and Web Editions each of which is designed to meet your business needs.

Omnis Studio lets you develop and deploy applications under Windows, Linux and Mac OSX while using any of the leading databases, including Oracle, Sybase, DB2, Informix, MySQL, Frontbase*, Openbase*, as well as JDBC and ODBC compliant databases such as MS SQL Server.
(* – Native access provided by 3rd party Data Access Managers.)

Key Product Features:

Integrated Development Environment (IDE)


Omnis Studio employs a What-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) visual design environment. Simply drag-and-drop visual elements onto your design windows to create the appearance you want. Studio runs on all major desktop operating systems, allowing Windows, Mac OS X & Linux single users as well as teams to develop, test, preview and deploy applications seamlessly, to any of these platforms.

Omnis Studio includes over 70 built-in Objects and Components (buttons, menus, fields, reports, graphs, pictures and more), and gives developers complete flexibility to design all kinds of projects, from single-user databases to fully-fledged business solutions.

The Omnis Studio development environment includes many design palettes and wizards, allowing you to assemble the components of your application quickly and easily. Once the component parts of your application are in place, you can add Omnis code and notation behind your window buttons, create methods, reports and communicate with other applications, databases and processes. You can test every aspect of your application from the development environment without the need to compile or link any code!

Armed with a powerful Version Control System (VCS) Omnis Studio allows teams of developers to coordinate their efforts in producing larger applications. The Object Oriented approach which supports inheritance makes it easy to overload and customize both visual and non-visual objects to your exact requirements.

Omnis Programming 


Omnis has a built-in programming language providing flow of control statements, iterative statements, expression evaluation, and many commands. For example, commands such as opening files and displaying dialogs are achieved with a single Omnis command.

Omnis 4GL supports all traditional programming constructs such as variables, loops, procedures (methods) & functions as well as conditional programming. In addition to standard data types, Omnis implements single and multi-dimensional arrays using the unique Omnis List type.

Omnis notation – the power behind Omnis Studio. Omnis notation complements the Omnis programming language, providing a way of referencing all objects and settings in your application. Comprising of a tree structure, Omnis notation can be used to access every element inside your application, external components as well as platform and environmental settings.

Omnis supports inter-process communication via Omnis Automation and COM objects under Windows. Automate programs that are compatible with AppleScripts or Apple Events under Mac OS X. Launch and interact with external applications under Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Use your Omnis application to perform parallel processing of routine tasks.

The Omnis language is a real-time interpreted programming language. There is no need to compile and link projects in order to test them- just open the startup task and go. Windows can even be tested independently from the rest of the application.

Version Control System (VCS)


The Omnis Version Control System (VCS) provides complete version tracking and control, reliable object and library storage, and flexible application build management. Using the Omnis VCS you have complete control over your project, team development, and product deployment. Whether you are working on your own on a single application, or in a global team of developers working on multiple projects, the Omnis VCS provides a single hub for managing your development process, allowing efficient and successful deployment of your application. The Omnis VCS gives you:

  • Detailed version histories that document changes object-by-object and build-by-build; if necessary, you can roll-back individual changes to restore previous revisions.
  • Detailed reports of all coding that let you supervise individual progress and manage development across the team.
  • Collaborative development; team members can develop using their chosen platform without object modification.
  • A central repository for all objects; components can be accessed and reused in any Omnis application, on any platform, saving you time and maintenance costs.
  • Projects can be stored in any of the supported server databases including Oracle, Sybase, and DB2, as well as the Omnis local database.

The Omnis VCS gives you complete control of your application development life-cycle. Developer team members can logon, check-out components, make their changes, and check-in updated components using drag and drop.

Database Connectivity 


Omnis Data Access Modules (DAMs) are provided enabling connections to all major database vendors. The use of DAMs (other than the OmnisSQL DAM) requires the Enterprise or Web Edition of Omnis Studio.

With Omnis Studio you are able to drag database tables and views quickly and easily into your application to build a description of the table (schema) or use the SQL Browser utility to create, modify and show the contents of tables. And with the help of Interactive SQL utility you can perform queries directly against your database tables from within Omnis Studio.

Application Deployment on LAN and the Web


Finished applications can be locked to hide their content from end-users and to prevent modifications to your code. Applications written in Omnis Studio can be accessed by Omnis Runtime Client or by the Internet Browsers using the JavaScript Client Plug-in.

Follow this link to view real world examples of web applications created using the Omnis JavaScript Client

http://www.tigerlogic.com/tigerlogic/omnis/products/webclient/index.jsp