m-Power Manual

m-Power Build Process The m-Power build process has two components: Template Application Specifications The Template is the program shell that controls the functionality and the general layout for the application. The m-Power Application Specifications are the detailed program definitions including, but not limited to: necessary tables, fields, table joins, record selections, work fields, and external […]

Making Your First Application Making your first m-Power application can seem like a daunting task. However, a little bit of planning makes the process go much more smoothly. For that reason, when beginning a new application, mrc recommends that you plan out all of the screens before even creating your first screen. While no two […]

m-Power Application Design Sheet   Screen Sketch: Notes: Settings Type / Template:Number / Title: Tables Primary:Secondary: Fields Sequencing Selections Firm:Runtime: Calcs Ext Objects SmartLinks Learn more about selecting an application type and template by clicking here.

Select an Application Type and Template m-Power ships with over a dozen templates which gives you numerous options when deciding how an application should look and function. The first decision is what type of application to create. m-Power defines four general types: Retrievals, Reports, Summaries, and Maintenance Applications. Then, each of those application types has […]

Application Settings The Create a New Application screen and the Applications Settings specification are both similar. When first creating your application you will be brought to the Create a New Application Screen. Should you wish to make a change to anything initially specified, you cannot return to that screen. Instead, you can use the Application […]

Table/Field Selection After first creating your table, you will automatically be brought to the Data Selection specification screen. Initially, you will be prompted to select your first table. Notice that all of the tables available to you are all the tables that you have registered to your current data dictionary. Here you can filter your […]

Sequencing Sequencing is the last required step in the build process. This is a screenshot of the Sequence Field Selection screen: All of the fields that you selected through the Table/Field Selection specification will appear in this drop-down list..  Sequencing will allow you to order your application by any field(s) in either ascending or descending […]

Record Selections Record Selections can be used to display subsets of data in an application.  For instance, imagine a retrieval built over a sales history table with over 100,000 records. It is not always practical to show all 100,000 records at one time.  Perhaps an end-user needs to be able to select a particular date […]

Field Settings Using the Field Settings specification, you can delete, reorder, and edit the appearance of fields you have selected for your application. Deleting a Field To delete a field from your application, check the box referring the field you want to delete and click accept. Notice that in the screenshot the Customer Number field […]

Calculations The Calculations specification is an important tool in designing applications, allowing you to create new fields to work with in subsequent calculations, record selections, and external objects. Through calculations, you can create numeric and character expressions, call database functions, and perform conditional logic. Input Fields: Field Name- When creating new fields in summaries, you […]

External Objects The External Objects feature within m-Power allows developers to call their own back-end business logic. External Objects can be written in a variety of programming languages, such as Java, RPG, and CL.  When adding an external object to an application, you will be brought to the following screen. Select the external object and […]

SmartLinks SmartLinks allow you to easily link one application (Retrieval, Report, or Maintenance) to any other application, passing key data automatically. The benefits of this are many, including: You can create applications that allow users to drill from an order header table to order details records. View a list of products and maintain records based […]

m-Power Build Screen   The m-Power build screen handles the compiling of your application specifications into generated java code, capable of being run by end-users via a browser. The compile process consists of creating and storing these run-time objects on your m-Power server. By default, these generated objects can be accessed at \m-power\mrcjava\WEB-INF\classes\DATA_DICTIONARY\. Developers can […]