OSIRIS is our new application
architecture used to implement all of Osiris Technology's products.
It is the foundation of version 3 OSFAX and will allow OSFAX to evolve quickly
through this decade. OSIRIS can be thought of as an example of a fully
transactional operating system hosting a range of applications.
The application framework provides a fast method of designing an application and laying
out its data relationships.
It has a high performance, low overhead application browser interface
driven directly from the meta data, that
provides a consistent user interface across a whole application.
Anyone trained in one application can use another very easily.
This application browser is fully animated so that any changes committed to the database
will be displayed after the next keystroke or mouse movement,
or within five seconds if there is no activity to every user who has
the affected fields on their screen. This provides a truly collaborative work
environment in all applications.
The application browser intelligently
scales its presentation depending upon the size of the display available
so that applications will automatically run on PDA sized screens.
Security
The OSIRIS framework provides a security system that is easy
to understand and comprehensive in its capabilities.
Security is validated via a number of mechanisms as a new process is started.
Auto login from a Windows domain or UNIX host is provided for local networks
that are reasonably secure.
You may allow only certain domains or hosts to connect to an OSIRIS domain.
Once validated security is managed internally by a system of permissions
that may be required at every field in the system for every user or group.
This huge intersection of possibilities is managed using a hierarchical
inheritance mechanism that requires very little CPU resources
or database space in the typical application.
Most uses of the OSIRIS database are client server in architecture.
All operations on Windows have to run client server as there is no other
way to build a secure server on Windows.
The OSIRIS client (available for all platforms) provides a secure
128 bit encrypted TCP/IP connection that is safe to run across the public internet.
The OSIRIS server has built in firewall facilities allowing more
discrimination than an external firewall.
Different security clearance levels can be set for TCP/IP connections
from different external networks.
This allows the application to force a manual
login from some untrusted locations and allow automatic login
from trusted domains and disallow logins from anywhere else if required.
Logging of connections and their results is also controlled at this level.
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Performance
The transactional performance of the kernel is very high
as it is used for almost every activity in the system.
There is no permanent state that is not stored within the database.
Everything is addressable from all places, given permission,
and from outside the whole system.
Validating and attaching to the database has been kept as fast as possible
to facilitate use of database references from other scripting application environments
without having to manage a continuous open connection.
The OSIRIS client application is ultra thin so that there is very little
running on the client computer.
The client thus very rarely needs to be updated in the field as applications evolve.
The OSIRIS client software is free with a server licence.
The client server protocol is optimised for low bandwidth,
ideal for wireless networks and GPRS.
Unlike HTTP browser based web applications every keystroke and mouse action
is sent back to the server allowing for a much more ergonomic,
responsive application.
Keystroke validation is immediate and highly context sensitive, as it should be.
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