Chapter 1. Introduction

Managing and operating on hierarchical data structures is an issue in many projects, alongside with security concerns, versioning and querying. Till now, neither open nor closed source projects or frameworks offer possibilities to dynamically define and manipulate the structure of hierarchical data in a scope like [fleXive]. Hence the urge to provide a solution that combines flexibility, security and performance in one customizable package.

[fleXive] is a JavaEE 5 open-source (LGPL) framework for the development of complex and evolving (web-)applications. It speeds up development as it handles numerous important application issues and keeps your application flexible over the development-cycle. It is based on the lastest industry-standards like EJB 3, JSF, etc.

The [fleXive] administration GUI is an optional application built on top of the framework and is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It helps you to visually manage most aspects of [fleXive] - like defining data structures, building queries, manage users and security, etc.

[fleXive] concentrates on enterprise-scale content storage and retrieval, and includes comprehensive JSF support for displaying and manipulating these contents in web applications. The runtime environment can be included in existing JavaEE applications, but you can also build new applications and package them into stand-alone JavaEE applications. Our emphasis lies on the runtime environment, so if you are looking e.g. for tool-driven JSF development, take a look at the popular JBoss Seam framework and embed the [fleXive] runtime environment in that project.

The goal of [fleXive] is to relieve you from many tendious and repetitive programming tasks when building secure, data-centric (web-)applications.

If you are new to [fleXive] please use the following tools to get started:

  1. The [fleXive] website will provide you with top-level information about [fleXive]. Have a look at the "Explore [fleXive]" section.

  2. This reference documentation will provide all information to use [fleXive] for the development of your application.

  3. In the [fleXive] wiki you will find more tutorials, HowTo's, FAQs, samples and developer infos

For questions, use the [fleXive] forum and mailinglists. We also provide a issue trackings system for bug reports and feature requests. In case you are interested in the development of [fleXive], have a look at the Development Section on the [fleXive] website and join the developer mailinglist.

[fleXive] is a Professional Open Source project. UCS - unique computing solutions gmbh (http://www.ucs.at) offers commercial development support and training for [fleXive].