Platform Concepts
The RQL platform hosts a plethora of features for building and managing apps, data collection, and reporting. In order to maximize your use of the API, it is important to understand the concepts of the RQL platform.
Content
A site is a container where platform applications and data live. Each site runs on an instance of the platform and stores data independently of other sites.
An app is an application developed using the RQL’s Portable Business Language (PBL). It consists of properties, views, entities and workbooks that, together, allows for data collection, execution of workflows, and reporting.
PBL is a set of declarative markup tags and XPath expressions for building platform apps.
A property is a named data field of an app. It is defined with a data type of text, integer, number, date, time, datetime and lookup.
A lookup is a special property of an app that is a pointer to another app. It allows for the creation of one-to-many or many-to-many relationships between one or more applications.
A view is a means of presenting or collecting data to end-users in the user interface. It is defined within an app and can be of type Form or Workbook.
A queue is a special type of view that is a means of presenting entities to the end-user. Queues can present entity data in various styles such as Grids, Calendars, Charts, and custom plugins.
A form is a type of view that presents either a collection read-only or editable fields of an app to the end-user. Forms can present infinite combinations of properties for data collection or reporting allowing for simple and rich presentation scenarios.
A workbook is a special type of view that enhances forms with auditor specific features and tools.
A media file is any kind of file. Media files can be tagged with a category and used for enriching platform apps. Images shown in forms and workbooks and report templates are just some of the types of media files used by app developers.
A PBL page is a text document that contains PBL declarations. Generally, an app is built using one or more PBL pages.
When an app has been declared in one or more PBL pages, the app developer needs to instruct the RQL platform to build the app to see it in action. When instructed to perform a build, the RQL platform takes PBL from the PBL pages then compiles, builds, and deploys a platform app.
Data
A store is an xml document containing all the data for an instance of an app.
A transaction is an xml document with instructions for changing a store document. When any change is made to a store, a transaction must first be recorded.
An entity is a named collection of properties for an app. These properties are values are taken directly out of or calculated from one or more properties of an app. Entities are important to many features of the platform such as queues and lookups. Essentially data tables, entities can be filtered and sorted when queried.
An artifact is a file attachment. When a file is uploaded to an app’s file field, an artifact is created and the store is updated with a pointer to the respective artifact.