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Preface

Welcome to the Zen QuickStart Tutorial!

Using the Zen Web application framework, you can easily and rapidly build data-driven Web applications with rich and highly interactive user interfaces. Zen includes an extensive library of data aware user interface components. These components are ready-to-use, but they can also be combined and extended to create new customized components. Zen components are also tightly integrated with the Caché database making data exchange between Zen components and Caché applications fast and efficient as well as easy to develop.

The Zen Tutorial provides a hands-on introduction to building Zen applications. Zen contains a very large number of features. This tutorial covers only a few of the basic features. For more comprehensive information, please consult the Zen documentation: Using Zen.

The tutorial is divided into four parts that should be completed in the following order:

  1. Part I: Overview. Contains an introduction to Zen and its architecture.

  2. Part II: Displaying Data with a Table. Demonstrates how to use the Zen tablePane component to display a table of data. This part of the tutorial also demonstrates how to create new composite components, control the style of components, and arrange components on a Web page. In this part of the tutorial you begin building the Zen Contacts contact management application.

  3. Part III: Updating Data Using a Form and Zen MVC. Demonstrates how to use Zen forms to collect, validate, and store data using the Zen Model-View-Controller framework. In addition, this section demonstrates how to use Zen controls including the text and dataCombo controls. In this section you continue building the Zen Contacts application by adding a form for updating contact information.

  4. Part IV: Exercises. Provides instructions for extending the Zen Contacts application that you started in Part II and Part III. You add a table for viewing the phone information for a contact and a form for editing that information.

Note:

This tutorial assumes basic familiarity with Caché and ObjectScript (COS) as well as HTML, JavaScript, and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). To learn more about Caché and COS, read the Caché QuickStart and ObjectScript tutorials. To learn more about JavaScript, HTML, and CSS read the tutorials on the W3 SchoolsOpens in a new tab Web site.

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