
.. _advanced:

===============
Advanced Topics
===============

Agile Data
==========

Agile Data is a business logic and data persistence framework. It's a
separate library that has been specifically designed and developed
for use in Agile UI.

With Agile Data you can easily connect your UI with your data and make
UI components store your data in SQL, NoSQL or RestAPI. On top of the
existing persistencies, Agile UI introduces a new persistence class: "UI".

This UI persistence will be extensively used when data needs to be
displayed to the user through UI elements or when input must be
received from the UI layer.

If you do not intend to store data anywhere or are using your own
ORM, the Agile Data will still be used to some extent and therefore
it appears as requirement.

Most of the ORMs lack several important features that are necessary
for UI framework design:

 - ability to load/store data safely with conditions.
 - built-in support for column meta-information
 - field, type and table mapping
 - "onlyFields" support for efficient querying
 - domain-level model references.

Agile Data is distributed under same open-source license as Agile UI
and the rest of this documentation will assume you are using Agile
Data for the purpose of overall clarity.

Interface Stability
===================

Agile UI is based on Agile Toolkit 4.3 which has been a maintained
UI framework that can trace it's roots back to 2003. As a result, the
object interface is highly stable and all of the documented methods,
models and properties will not change even in the major releases.

If we do have to change something we will keep things backwards
compatible for a period of a few years.

We expect you to extend base classes to build your UI as it is a
best practice to use Agile UI.

Testing and Enterprise Use
==========================

Agile UI is designed with corporate use in mind. The main aim of
the framework is to make your application consistent, modern and
fast.

We understand the importance of testing and all of the Agile UI
components come fully tested across multiple browsers. In most cases
browser compatibility is defined by the underlying CSS framework.

With Agile UI we will provide you with a guide how to test your
own components.

Unit Tests
----------

You only need to unit-test you own classes and controllers. For
example if your application creates a separate class that deals
with APR calculation, you need to include unit-test for that
specific class.

Business Logic Unit Tests
-------------------------

Those tests are most suitable for testing your business logic,
that is included in Agile Data. Use "array" persistence to
pre-set model with the necessary data, execute your business
logic with mock objects.

1. set up mock database arrays
2. instantiate model(s)
3. execute business operation
4. assert new content of array.

In most cases the Integration tests are easier to make, and
give you equal testability.

Integration Database Tests
--------------------------

This test-suite will operate with SQL database by executing
various database operations in Agile Data and then asserting
business logic changes.

1. load "safe" database schema
2. each test starts transaction and is finished with a roll-back.
3. perform changes such as adding new invoice
4. assert through other models e.g. by running client report model.

Component Tests
---------------

All of the basic components are tested for you using UI tests,
but you should test your own components. This test will place
your component under various configurations and will make sure
that it continues to work.

If your component relies on a model, this can also attempt
various model combinations for an extensive test.

User Testing
------------

Once you place your components on your pages and associate
them with your actual data you can perform user tests.
