Installation Setting Things Up

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Technical Overview

What is it - ORIGAM?

ORIGAM is a complete enterprise platform for designing, building, deploying and running applications.

Unlike many frameworks, ORIGAM is an end-to-end solution consisting of a set of tools (see below). ORIGAM is designed to be used by target driven, solution focused people who need to build their solutions fast, scalable and flexible.

ORIGAM platform consists of

  • Model driven development environment
  • Application server
  • Smart client web application
  • Smart client desktop application (optional)

What is ORIGAM NOT?

  • ORIGAM is NOT a development framework.
  • ORIGAM is NOT a programming language environment.

Prerequisites & 3rd Party Software

Although ORIGAM brings many built-in tools that greatly improve your ability to solve your customer’s requirements, ORIGAM does not run only by itself. You will need some more software in order to develop a proper enterprise application:

  • .NET Framework
  • Database
  • Web Server
  • Source files versioning system (optional)

You can see how all these components work together on this diagram:

ORIGAM Architect

Architect is a visual development tool that will help you reduce the time to deliver your application greatly.

Most of the times it will allow you to design/model your application instead of coding.

ORIGAM Architect is a Windows desktop application and it stores the results of its work in:

  • Model Database
  • Source files versioning system

Database

As enterprise applications typically heavily depend on storing and retrieving data, you will need to store these data somewhere.

Fortunately, there exist databases, so ORIGAM can use them.

As enterprise companies typically use Microsoft stack, ORIGAM’s favorite database is Microsoft SQL Server at the moment.

You need to have a running installation of SQL Server before installing ORIGAM. If you do not have one, you can download a free SQL Server Express Edition.

What do we store in the database?

  • Application’s model

The model contains whatever functionality you modeled using ORIGAM Architect. Whether it is a screen, API or a part of the business logic, everything is stored in a database. In a programmer’s world we would call it a source code.

  • Application’s data

These are the data your application will produce. These can be an address book, task list, etc.

Web Server

A web server is a piece of software running on your physical server that allows web browsers to communicate with your web application. It handles lots of different things like HTTP, Cookies, Sessions, etc. You do not have to necessarily understand all that.

Think of it as a host which will deliver all the requests made by the client application running in the user’s browser to the application you have made.

Again, since we will be serving a Microsoft world mostly, ORIGAM’s favorite web server is Microsoft Internet Information Services or IIS.

IIS is a part of your Windows Server or Windows operating system and you need to install it before installing ORIGAM.

.NET Framework

.NET is a piece of technology developed by Microsoft which allowed us to develop ORIGAM. It is mostly a part of Windows and Windows server, but sometimes we run on the latest version and you will have to download it from Microsoft and install it.

If you are a developer, you can extend ORIGAM by writing your own .NET modules. Otherwise you just need to have it installed.

ORIGAM Application Server

Not enough servers? There is one more, no less important.

ORIGAM Application Server is a piece of software that will run inside the IIS Web Server and it will connect all the pieces:

  • Load the model you developed using Architect.
  • Communicate with the client’s browser.
  • Process all the business logic you designed.
  • Retrieve/store data in the database.

Application server will execute your application (in the good way).

Client Application

A client application is a piece of software the users will work with. Unless you will go into the challenge of developing your own custom HTML frontend, your users will work with a standardized productivity oriented desktop-like application.

Along the standard web based application, you will also have a possibility to provide your customers with a Native Windows Desktop Application which can be convenient in offline or local networks scenarios.

Source Files Versioning System

You do not write much of a typical source code with ORIGAM since it is a Model Driven tool but there is something we borrow from the software development world. We are developing a software anyway, right?

Imagine the following scenarios:

  • You developed a feature and the customer decides to throw it away.
  • You tried something, it did not work and you want to go back to the previous state.
  • A new feature is being developed but you do not want to give it to the customer yet. But you need to fix bugs in the current version anyway.
  • You are not alone and you have to work in a team where multiple people develop the application.
  • Something changed and you want to know who it was and what exactly they did.

All of this is being solved by a source control management system. Our favorite is GIT.

Using GIT you will store all your development efforts in its repository along with the model database.

Platform Setup

This lesson will guide you through the ORIGAM Platform installation. After the installation you will need to set up your first project. This lesson covers only the installation itself.

In order to install ORIGAM platform you need to go through the following steps:

In the end you will have the following components installed:

  • ORIGAM Architect modeling environment
  • ORIGAM Server template
  • Microsof SQL Server database ready for your first project
  • Web Server (IIS) ready for your first project

Prerequisites

Please install the following 3rd party software that is needed to successfully install ORIGAM. Mark each entry when you are done and then press EVALUATE.

Microsoft .NET Framework 4.6+

.NET Framework is a platform ORIGAM was built with. You need it in order to run all ORIGAM applications.

Microsoft IIS server 7+

IIS is a web server that will serve the applications you create.

Important: Do not install IIS Express. You need a full-featured IIS Server which is bundled with your version of Windows/Windows Server.

Microsoft SQL Server 2008+

SQL Server is the database behind ORIGAM. It will store all the data your application will generate.

Important: In case of SQL Express you need the version that includes Management Tools.