A single CYPEX deployment can handle a large set of applications running inside the same database. Open Builder → Applications in the sidebar and CYPEX presents a list of every app currently deployed on the system.
You can easily manage your applications from this menu. This includes but isn’t limited to:
- Generating new applications
- Incremental rendering for existing applications
- Launching applications
- Deleting obsolete apps
- Importing entire applications from other systems
Let’s walk through this important page:
CYPEX applications list
The Applications page lists every app currently deployed on the system. Each row exposes generate, render, launch, delete, and import actions.
The most important moment in the life-cycle of a CYPEX application is its creation. CYPEX predicts the application out of the underlying data module. To start the process, click GENERATE. This opens the following screen:
The first thing you define is the name and description of the application. Then you configure which user the app must be predicted for. This matters because depending on who you are, you end up with a different application — CYPEX only renders elements you have access to. If you aren’t allowed to perform certain operations in your application (for example, “sign contract”), CYPEX will not generate tables, forms, or buttons for that purpose. Selecting the right user is therefore of vital importance. It is also often necessary to create many applications for the same database: a backoffice application and a front-office application for the same online shop will be totally different because of permissions and requirements.
Once you have decided on the owner user, you select the queries to use in your application. Selected queries are used by the default rendering and app prediction code. Often it is necessary to render all existing objects, but this is far from certain — selective rendering is supported.
Finally, you choose a layout, which is a vital part of the process: in large companies, the visual style of an app is of critical importance.
Once the new application has been generated, it shows up in the list:
Next to each application in the list, you find a set of icons that manage the application life-cycle:
The name of your application can be easily added after its creation. You can also define the default language of the application:
Applications are not static. During a project, the first incarnation of an application is rarely the final version — new tables are added, and you need to work incrementally on the application. The generate pages for new queries section predicts pages and adds them to your existing application. It works after the app has been used or heavily modified. Incremental rendering dramatically improves the life-cycle of your application — no application is ever static, and the ability to add data sources after an app has become productive is vital:
Note that you can only render pages that are not yet part of your application. CYPEX provides only those queries that have not been used, reducing the manual input needed to an absolute minimum.
The play button launches the application you have just created. You can use it to:
- Use the application
- Open the application to run the WYSIWYG editor
CYPEX allows you to export an application. This matters because development is generally not carried out on a production system — apps must be transported between CYPEX deployments. Import and export achieve exactly that.
The entire definition of the graphical user interface (GUI) is a single JSON document which can easily be stored, read, and modified as needed. You can put it under version control to ensure that changes are tracked.
If you no longer need an application you can delete it:
What this does is remove the JSON documents from the database. Note that it does not delete queries, tables, constraints, or workflows — all you delete is the JSON definition representing the graphical user interface. CYPEX will not put your data at risk.
- Dashboard — entry point to the admin panel.
- Database — the underlying schema and queries.
- Repository Applications — load whole apps from a Git repository.
- Setup guide — build your first application in step 5.
- Building apps across organizations — why this list shows different rows to a system admin vs an organization admin, and how the same scoping carries into export.