My experiences using Omnis Studio

For the past year and a half, I have been an IT specialist application development trainee at Omnis Software Germany, while also taking IT lessons at a vocational college in Hamburg, the Berufliche Schule ITECH Elbinsel Wilhelmsburg. As part of a college project “Living with the virus”, we were asked to implement a solution to a problem related to the Covid pandemic.

Our student project team (Finn Stirnemann, Felix Malchau, Philipp Bangert and myself) found that during the pandemic the need for anti-bacterial or disinfectant “hand-gel”, and their dispensers (‘Desinfektionsmittel’ in German FYI), has increased dramatically, but that they can become empty all too quickly – those responsible for these dispensers may not even notice when the containers have become empty…

To solve this problem, our team created “AutoDessi”, an automated hand-gel dispenser that measures its hand-gel fill level automatically via a sensor and writes it to a database. Our solution also includes a web application that evaluates and graphically displays the data from the database.

The solution is designed to ensure that there is always enough hand-gel available by informing the staff responsible for the dispensers when the level in a dispenser falls below a certain minimum quantity. At the same time, this avoids unnecessary maintenance rounds, as staff only need to refill the dispensers that are actually almost empty!

Our experience in programming Omnis Studio

We only had three and a half weeks for the entire project. In addition to assembling and testing the hardware (hand-gel dispenser, sensors, Raspberry Pi board), programming the database (PostgreSQL) and the project documentation, there was only one week to develop the web application including the UI.

Therefore, we decided to develop the app in Omnis Studio using the current version 10.2. Since Omnis has fast prototyping features, and is very productive and powerful, we were able to program the required functionality and to create a comprehensive and graphically appealing interface within only a few days.

Project Success

The resulting integrated Omnis Web application created has several functions:

• A minimum level can be defined for each hand-gel dispenser.
• When the minimum level is reached in a dispenser, the maintenance team receive an email notification automatically.
• The web app also provides usage statistics, programmed and visualized using the JavaScript components in Omnis Studio.

Even though we did not have a lot of time, our web app is quite powerful and innovative: it evaluates the data from the database and displays it graphically using JavaScript Remote forms and JS components. The notification function can be customized and an SMTP Worker Object in Omnis Studio takes care of sending the notifications by email.

Maurin Wannags 

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Dan Ridinger has spent his career successfully combining the worlds of education and business – which is why he appreciates Omnis Studio so much.

Commercial expertise….

Dan first encountered Omnis in 1985 (“basically I was looking for a cross-platform development tool as I wanted to build my own set of products to run on a PC and Mac”) and has been a loyal customer and advocate ever since.

During an illustrious commercial career, developing real-life applications such as Mediator and GalleryGuard and partnering with major global brands including Motorola, Dan has seen at first-hand the real-time commercial advantages of the Omnis Studio application development environment.

“Once Omnis became a true single-source multi-platform, I was able to get more from the environment and so was able to develop enterprise level applications.”

“Omnis covers the entire life cycle. You can use it as a prototyping tool, so whatever you do – it becomes a real application. You can create databases with it or easily integrate it with industry standard databases, so you don’t need to generate any scripts from scratch if you don’t want to do it the hard way. That makes it especially great in terms of code management.

“It also can be written so that it is externally aware of different devices, allowing developers to develop applications all over the world with a minimum of barriers – a key advantage in a globalised economy.”

Bridging the gap between university and the real world….

As a sessional instructor at Simon Fraser University (SFU), Vancouver, Canada, Dan believes that Omnis gives his students a distinct advantage over those from other higher education establishments.

“One of the main reasons why I brought it into the education sector was that without Omnis Studio my students wouldn’t get proper exposure to these types of tools. I’ve had comments like ‘I didn’t know there were tools like this out there’” he explains.

“I was just showing them last week about how to get started with a prototype.  They were just blown away that I had all the baseline code I needed to develop the app. It was basically ready to go – right out of the box.”

For Dan, encouraging his students to appreciate the real-world pressures of tight timescales and even tighter budgets is a key aspect of his delivering the curriculum that underpins his “Project Requirements Engineering” course.

Omnis Studio – making light work of application development….

And Omnis Studio, with all its single-source multi-platform advantages, is his application tool of choice. Whilst some students like to go back to coding fundamentals, Dan is at pains to stress that that is a luxury available to few in the real world.

“The key thing I want my students to understand is not so much the coding skills themselves, rather it’s all about their use of time. When a student requests to write an application from scratch, I say well that’s fine, but in the real world, that’s not going to work: you have deadlines. Employers are not going to say just because you like doing it that way – then great!”

Omnis Studio 10 – a significant upgrade….

He also emphasises to his students that Omnis Studio allows them to create functional prototypes rather than just mock up applications.

“They can see they can build something and it works, it’s real and it’s based on the requirements we face in the real world. When you do a mock-up there’s so much latitude for misunderstandings! With Omnis Studio, there are no such mis-communications

They’re developing applications that actually work and can be seen working. So, students develop real applications, not mock-ups which don’t work.

Dan builds simple Omnis Studio applications right in front of his classes over the course of just half an hour – just to emphasis his points.

When asked about the advantages to his students of the recent Omnis Studio release, Dan is unequivocal.

“It’s got object oriented programming, database access and has the contextual status of roles built into it.  The other aspect which differentiates it from other tools is its ease of integration into hardware such as the serial connection, making it easier to connect to devices.

“And it’s definitely a significant upgrade on the mobile side – very much so” he enthuses. “With the mobile side of things, if you don’t have this you wouldn’t even be considered anywhere. You’ve got to have mobile app development and with Omnis Studio it’s all in one package.”

Omnis Studio – the opportunity for other universities….

Dan believes that more universities should be offering Omnis Studio on their computer studies courses.

“I may be being controversial here, but I would say some universities don’t always have the right levels of contemporary experience in industry. More and more of them are saying to me that we here at SFU have an advantage in seeing what’s going on in the real world and they don’t always have that ‘luxury.”

He also praises Omnis Software’s support, both that provided by the company itself and its large and growing developer community.

For Dan Ridinger, the future is Omnis. “I teach between 65 and 100-plus students each semester. All of them now know about the Omnis concept, that it is out there and that it’s a fully integrated and industrial strength development tool!”

—
Interview & words by
Paul Simon Dip. CIPR
– clear-sighted public relations solutions
m: 07578910265

Dan Ridinger was interviewed by Paul Simon, who we are delighted to welcome to our blog today as a guest writer. You can read more about Dan’s GalleryGuard solution for managing items in a museum or gallery in our Case Study.

The post Teaching students all aspects of application development – by a leading Omnis developer appeared first on Omnis.

Omnis Solutions in Retail

What do these Italian companies have in common, do you think?

• CRAI – Supermarket, mini-markets & other stores, and in the Top 10 of Italian retailers.
• Maxi Di – chain of supermarkets.
• Supermercati Tosano – hypermarkets, and part of VéGé Group.
• Ali Group – one of the largest global leaders in the foodservice equipment industry.
• L’Abbondanza – Supermarket chain.
• PittaRosso – 100 Footwear stores in Italy, 20 others across Europe.
• Megamark – department stores & supermarkets.
• Gruppo SME srl – general retail including technology, electrical & household appliances, furniture.

With a combined turnover of over € 8 billion (euros), all these companies use a software solution written using Omnis Studio and created by Italian developer Camì Informatica srl. We have published details about their Point of Sale (POS) and Warehousing (GDO) solution in a new success story. Michele Grande, Camì’s CEO made some very kind and insightful comments about Omnis and how it helps them to create their software:

“We use leading technology tools such as Omnis Studio to develop our software because it allows us to pay special attention to quality and performance…  Due to the improvements in the latest Omnis versions, Camì can now provide some of the functionalities of its software directly on the web, without having to rewrite them in different languages, providing a high level of code reusability.”

We would like to thank Michele for his generous comments and we are very grateful for his business. Camì srl are supported in Italy by our fantastic Italian distributor Software Products Italia, SoftPI (www.softpi.com), who support our customers in Italy, Spain and several countries in South America.
Read the full success story here:
www.omnis.net/successstories/cami.jsp
And note that the story is available in English, Italian, French and German.

Omnis Solutions in Education

As well as Retail, the Arts, Manufacturing and Healthcare, Omnis supports many developers who provide solutions for Education in schools, colleges and universities. We have recently published a success story about how a Scottish council created a solution to manage pupil placement for 8000 children & budgets for schools in the West Lothian region.
John Thain, Statistics and Pupil Placement Officer, for West Lothian Council, and who created the solution using Omnis Studio, said:

“The Omnis platform is very feature rich, and working in Omnis means I was able to develop the application quickly. Omnis also has great connectivity allowing us to connect to several existing software applications, such as bespoke geographic information systems and import data from a range of well-established systems, which saves time for our employees and further reduces the councils paper and postage usage. Throughout the development we received great support from the team at Omnis Software.”

We are so grateful for John’s comments and his close cooperation in writing this story for us. Read the full story about how West Lothian Council in Scotland used Omnis:
www.omnis.net/successstories/westlothian.jsp

Tell us your Story

If you have created an Omnis solution and would like to tell other developers about it, then please get in contact with us – not only is this interesting for other developers, it helps us promote Omnis Studio, to convince other developers to use Omnis, and in the long run this will help us grow the Omnis community! Please get in touch via our website:
www.omnis.net/contact
 

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