GSoft Framework

With the increasing number of customers using GMedia products, GSoft has been technically and operationally restructuring the suite of products, in order to respond adequately to the requirements of its customers without, however, being in conflict with the focus on product development that characterizes GSoft position in the market.

Over the last year, GSoft has been adjusting its development processes to Agile approaches. These changes (see article GSoft Agile Development Approach) are having a very positive impact on the quality and development efficiency of our products.

In order to improve development consistency and efficiency, GSoft invested on building a framework that will be the common ground of all GMedia Suite products.

With this framework becomes possible to customize several aspects of a product according to our customers business requirements.

Integration between GMedia applications

Software architecture defines how application components interact and relate to each other, reducing the application’s complexity through abstraction and separation of responsibilities among components.

The development of GSoft framework rests on a Service Oriented Architecture, in which business functions are exposed through services that can be consumed by other systems.

The communication with third parties, ie systems installed on customers infrastructure, it´s a matter of high importance since it allows a deeper integration into existing business processes across the organization. This integration is ensured through the use of interoperable technologies based on XML, like WSDL and SOAP, which represent the technology standards that support web-services.

A customer oriented product

As mentioned earlier, one of GSoft goals is providing its customers with a product that meets its needs. This objective is achieved by developing an extensibility model based on functional modules and providers, supported directly in the application framework, allowing points of specialization on the user interface and on the applications’ middleware component.

The Framework takes advantage of providers as a way to interact with legacy systems. For instance, authentication is established using a provider, allowing this process to use the identity systems of the organization, avoiding the decentralization of security management and standardizing the process of authentication across the network. All these providers can be easily replaced through a rapid deployment of new providers, or when already existing, only by changing the configuration of the application.

In the user interface the extensibility is guaranteed through functional modules dedicated to responding to each of the functional requirements of the customer or the product itself. Each module can be added or removed from the application just by changing its configuration. This approach allows GSoft to have a commercial offer that gives customers the ability to maximize investment in their products by purchasing only the relevant modules to their business needs.