Getting Started
Welcome to the support section of Tanubi. Tanubi provides a very broad range of functionality and therefore there are many things to learn if you want to get the most out of the application. So, to get you started, here is a brief introduction to Tanubi and how it works. This should help you understand the application better and help you when you are managing your own installation of Tanubi.
How Tanubi Works
Tanubi is broken into 3 fundamental parts; templates, modules, actions.
Templates
A Template defines how your application looks. The template defines the pictures, colours and even fonts in your application. It also defines where your menu appears, where the main part of each page is displayed and the information. An example of a template is shown below.
Modules
A module is a self-contained unit that provides functionality to the Tanubi system. It is like an application that you may install on your computer in that it provides the ability to modify a related set of data using a set of actions.
Actions
An action is something that a module can do. For example, a word processor can print a document. It can also save, and edit a document. Actions are the same in that they define something that a module can do to the data for the module. A simple example is the SimplePage module:
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The module relates to all the information for a simple web page.
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The action View allows a user to view a simple web page.
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The action List allows a user to view a list of all the simple web pages.
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The action Edit allows a user to edit the content of a simple webpage.
Combining Templates, Modules and Actions
Templates provide the look of the application, modules are responsible for managing a related set of data, and actions are things that can be done to the data. Therefore, the Tanubi system provides 3 application levels, as shown below.
The template defines how a web page appears. In doing so, it selects the appropriate module, which loads the data required for the web page. The module then loads the required action and performs the action. An example of this process is detailed below:
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The template defines a menu, so it loads the menu module.
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The template then defines the main body of the application.
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The user has selected to view a simple web page, so the template loads the SimplePage module.
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The module determines the web page that the user has requested.
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The data for the web page is loaded.
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The module calls the View action.
Security
Tanubi uses a role-based security system. To do this it defines a number of roles, each of which have access to different modules and actions. These roles are then assigned to users to define the pages that they can access.
When a user attempts to access a page, Tanubi looks up the roles that the user belongs to and then checks these roles to see if the user can access the page. If the query is successful, the page is displayed to the user. If not, nothing is displayed.
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