Ive been digging around the product to see if we should be ...

[Toby Mills]

I want to stress that the docs say that all this ibx business is subject to change so I would not bet the farm on using any of it yet.

Just showing this as educational info if youre into this sort of thing.

Dont contact IBI if something is not correct or doesnt work as these docs say. This is not official stuff yet.

Toby

[Warren Hinchliffe]

This is amazing,

Many thanks, it will hopefully shed some light on areas we need to be illuminated.

[Toby Mills]

Ive been digging around the product to see if we should be writing our HTML pages differently these days and ran across some docs some of you might like to look at. Just substitute yourmachinename with your host name.

http://yourmachinename/ibi_apps/ibx/doc/doc.html

ibx Introduction

What is it

ibx is a simple, declarative-style, HTML5/CSS/Javascript framework & library that is designed for rapid application development.

It offers the following broad set of features:

 

Resource management - that is, you can centralize and manage all of the assets your application needs from simple XML resource bundles.

Modular loading - applications can be organized into runtime loaded modules to speed up application loading and execution.

Normalized UI Library - it has a full set of standard widgets built in for creating complex web apps with rich UI.

Built on jQueryUI Widgets , so it is simple to derive off of built in widgets, or create your own from scratch. You should be VERY familiar with the jQuery UI Widget Factory to use IBX successfully.

Allows for UI to be defined directly in markup. This makes management of widget definitions simple, maintainable, and reusable.

Is framework agnostic. You can use ibx with any other framework/library.

 

Why is it

ibx was created because Information Builders has, in the past, relied on third party libraries and frameworks. These have worked well for us, but have drawbacks.

 

Proprietary solutions required hefty licesning fees for distribution. They also tied IBI to the fortunes of the supplier. If they stopped supporting the product then we had to.

Open source solutions have all the same problems as listed above, but with the added issues of no reliable support at all.

 

The other big problem with the above solutions is that they tend to come and go like the tides. Today, maybe everyone is talking about Angular, or React, but as we know, tomorrow they will be talking about Django/Express/Vue/Meteor/Bootstrap/etc. WebFOCUS Development decided to bypass all of this, and just create a proprietary framework that IBI can control entirely. Which doesnt tie us to any outside vendor/supplier. We believed this approach gives us maximal flexibility, and agility vis-a-vis the ever growing web architecture.

ibx also gives us a rich internal ecosystem in which new developers can leverage a broad base of existing development knowledge.

How do I use it

Similar to jQuery you just include a single javascript file ibx.js and it will automatically bootstrap itself. This includes loading jQuery and all assets required to run an ibx appliction.

Much like jQuery, ibx has a simple function that you can pass a function to which will act as a main function for your application.

Have fun

[Steven Hall]

What release is this first available in Its not in 8202M.

[Toby Mills]

Hey Steve

I uncovered that while digging around in 8207. I think it was probably first inside 8207 - its describing how they make the UI look differently which really started in that release. Its certainly possible that its in there in some earlier release in some form.

Remember the ibx info is subject to change at anytime since IBI controls the software. This has not been published - I post it here for academic interest so we can maybe better troubleshoot applications.