Mrc Gives i Web Dev Tool More Smarts

March 12, 2013 Alex Woodie

Last month mrc added several new features to its flagship Web application development tool, m-Power, that should help customers in several ways, including easier updating of CSS themes, the capability to generate event-triggered messages from m-Power apps, and improvements to how customers document and promote changes to their applications.

The new message triggering functionality in m-Power has several uses. For starters, it could be used to automatically send an email or a SMS message when a certain event occurs on the system, such as completion of a form on a customer website, or the cancellation of a customer account.

Message triggering also gives m-Power customers another powerful possibility: workflow enabled applications. The feature can allow users to automatically receive notifications when their approval is required, such as for a purchase order over a certain amount.

Maintaining the look and feel of m-Power applications should be easier now thanks to a new Theming interface that allows users to modify cascading style sheets (CSS) in graphical point and click manner. No CSS knowledge is required to use this new feature, mrc says.

The new Theming function in m-Power allows developers to modify CSS documents in a point and click interface.

The Chicago, Illinois-based company dedicated some time and effort to improving housekeeping functions within m-Power. To that end, the tool now includes a new promotion function that allows developers to promote all files necessary to the production server with a single click. And with the new documentation function, developers will have a better record of exactly what changes made it into production, and which didn’t.

“These enhancements improve the application development process on several levels,” mrc’s manager of software development Tyler Wassell states in a press announcement. “They not only simplify application development, they also bring some powerful new features that m-Power users are sure to love.”

m-Power is a Web application development tool that uses a template-based approach to enable rapid delivery of new programs and functionality. After configuring new programs from pre-defined templates, m-Power generates Java code that runs on IBM i and all Java-enabled platforms. For more information, see www.mrc-productivity.com.