Building Applications

An application is something a user can consume.  It may be a web application in Flash, or a smartphone app that lets users control their products from anywhere.  The Overview of Building Applications introduces you to the platform features you can use to build your application.

Applications interact with the Platform through Web Services. They can be hosted directly from the Platform. Or they can be external web applications that combine information in Axeda with other customer, entitlement, or product information.  And native windows programs can also use Platform services.  The Data Model is important to understand the Platform’s objects and relationships.

An application includes logic running on the platform that looks at data and events from assets – Expression Rules and Groovy Scripts.  Groovy is used to program complex interactions using the Platform SDK or external Cloud services.  Groovy scripts can be run by Expression Rules or external Web Service clients.

Groovy on the platform is introduced here, or you can look at a simple tutorial showing how to build and call a "Hello World" web service with Scripto.  Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) often call Scripto because it can format and return data in the best format for the client, such as XML or JSON.

If you're comfortable diving into example code, there are several .NET programs which use WSDL to call predefined SOAP Web Services, in addition to a tutorial on using WSDL files from either Java or .NET languages.  Equally, the articles on Scripto include several Flash examples as well as a Scripto Reference Guide.

To see how business rules are used in location-based services, see Location-based Services.