IMIS: a tool for developing MIS for Internet/intranet environment

The Internet is becoming a de facto standard environment for the operation of most application software. A user (client) of the software uses a browser to operate it while the actual software may be located locally or remotely. Different techniques have evolved with time for implementation of such software within the basic client/server architecture. The initial development environment used a browser (as a client) and a Web server/HTML/CGI (as a server). Of late, technologies like CORBA, DCOM, etc., are becoming popular. Whatever the development environment or implementation technique, such software development is still a tedious job and requires the software developer to be an expert of various technologies. Such scenarios naturally demand a good development tool such that the whole development cycle is small and efficient and the pressure of learning different technologies for a software developer is reduced. We present our effort of designing and implementing such a tool, named IMIS. There are two major components in IMIS: the specification component and the implementation component. In the former, we specify the business process and the latter implements the specification. The core of the specification is the language in which the business process is specified and stored. The implementation component of IMIS will consist of the tools which produce the final customized MIS based on the specification which executes in an Internet/intranet environment.