m-Power Graphing Feature Gets an Overhaul
February 1, 2011 Alex Woodie
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The folks at mrc last week announced the overhaul of the graphing function of m-Power, its versatile application development environment that’s often used to create dashboards, business intelligence, and other Web-based applications on the IBM i server. Users should see much faster graph creation, among other improvements. The old adage, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” is perhaps even more true in today’s super competitive business intelligence market, where BI software companies are gung ho to deliver detailed and actionable information that is as pretty and easy-to-consume as possible. Chicago-based mrc, while not a true BI software vendor, nevertheless finds itself right in the middle of the race to deliver powerful yet intuitive BI tools, including report-writing applications, executive dashboards, internal-facing Web portals, and wireless apps. To that end, last week’s unveiling of an overhauled graphing engine in mrc’s flagship m-Power development environment is worthy of note. The graphing engine, which allows developers to create detailed graphs and charts to their applications, is a component of the m-Painter module, which is used to design interfaces for the m-Power applications (generated as J2EE code in mrc’s model-driven development paradigm).
The new graphing engine is much quicker, which will make it easier to create graphs. The vendor has also added a new “live preview” function, which allows developers to see how changes affect the finished product, and will eliminate the need to compile the application before viewing the changes. Adoption of the jQuery JavaScript library should also improve a developer’s ability to understand what the different graphing buttons do. jQuery is one of the most popular JavaScript libraries, and “uses familiar and intuitive interface elements that users instantly understand,” mrc says. The changes add up to a new graphing experience for m-Power users, says Brian Crowley, mrc’s director of development. “Easy-to-understand graphs and charts are key elements to reporting and dashboard applications,” Crowley states in a press release. “With the new improvements to the graphing interface, creating these necessary graphs and charts has never been easier.” RELATED STORIES mrc Unveils Software Exchange for m-Power Users m-Power Gets Better Record Filtering, Other Goodies Technology Mashup Yields an iPhone App for BPCS Data m-Power Gets New Interactive Reporting Templates mrc Goes Fully Graphical with Development Tool Interface FMS Solutions Finds mrc’s m-Power a Good Fit File Upload Feature Added to mrc’s m-Power Boise Cascade Gets ‘m-Powered’ with mrc Reporting Tool
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