News

Content App Server Simplifies .NET Development

• By Shawna McAlearney
• August 7, 2006

.NET developers just got a leg up in the content management arena with the release of Quantum Art's QP7.4 content application server, which is designed for graphical creation of lightweight Web apps and includes a Microsoft Visual Studio integration module. 

According to Quantum Art, QP7.4 now addresses solution architecture, code management and performance optimization in .NET Web application development. Integrated with Visual Studio ™ , QP7.4 provides an object-oriented templating environment that pre-generates code and enforces code reuse to minimize development steps and speed deployment.

And both users and developers find QP7 easy to use.

"We have 162 people who post content to our site," says Jami Morgan, IT project manager for Bernalillo County, NM. "Posting to it is just like creating a Word document, dropping in pictures and formatting just by clicking."
 
Morgan and her team used QP7 to streamline their Web management processes and distribute responsibility for maintaining Web content amongst all the County departments. This freed the Web team to administer the technical aspects of the site and work on other projects. Bernalillo then used another QP7 module called QP7.Payment to consolidate the transactions of its more than 60 collection departments spanning multiple organizations and disparate business processes.

The County is in the process of converting its intranet as well.  "We looked at other products, but we're so happy with the product that our users overwhelmingly wanted to stick with it," says Morgan. "A lot of functionality is there for programmers so you don't have to build from scratch and the user interface is very friendly for people who use Word and other Microsoft products."

Bryan Nguyen, a systems analyst who has only been with the County a short time, says that the product has about a two-week learning curve to lean the templates and the configuration of the backend. "If you aren't a .NET person, it will take a bit longer, but it's still straightforward," he says.

According to Quantum Art, other new features include:

• Single interface for adding/editing related content items—users save time by having an ability to edit multiple content articles via a single screen;
• Object "check in/check out"—a safety feature that prevents code overrides;
• Optimized Backend Performance—offering a further reduction in page download and processing time;
• Expanded Support for .NET 2.0—support for all the features of .NET 1.1 and .NET 2.0.

“Another benefit for .NET developers is they’ll have advanced Web services interfaces that will allow them to work with all forms of content data using integrated Web services and creating their own integration solutions," says Quantum Art CTO Lisa Oganissian. "Because the QP7 framework hides the complexities of data and presentation layer interactions, they can quickly build Web applications that syndicate content to a variety of sources, without having to know the delivery mechanism.”

Adds Oganissian: "Developers can now make use of all the Visual Studio IDE tools such as color-coding, visual design, IntelliSense and more."

Quantum Art is selling QP7.4 is available both as licensed software and as an on-demand service. Pricing
begins at $8,999 per CPU for commercial use and Quantum Art offers discounts to government, educational and non-profit customers.