For a general overview of Orbit see Products.

Orbit Web Development Suite is a complete, professional web application development environment. It is suitable for:

• simple and complex web application requirements;
• single developer and multi-developer applications;
• development shops where one person develops a complete application;
• teams with separate HTML developers, front-end developers, and back-end developers;
• environments which require a zero effort deployment option - Orbit requires nothing to be installed on client PCs; and
• Oracle Database shops.

With Orbit’s powerful event-driven server side programming, Orbit can be extended - add simple or complex business rules or change the behaviour of Orbit itself.

• What can Orbit do?
• How Does Orbit work?
• Orbit: Developer’s View

What can Orbit do?

The Orbit Web Development Suite is a complete development suite for building rich professional web applications on the Oracle Database platform.

Orbit 5.0 available now!

Orbit is a feature-rich web application development environment. All source code is stored in Orbit’s source code repository in the Oracle database. Orbit includes complete version control and source code management.

Orbit Feature Benefit Orbit Markup Language (OML) Powerful scripting language enables you to enhance and control page display. OML variables Create and modify variables with built-in commands. Use predefined token modifiers for easy presentation options. OML token functions Use the built-in token functions and your custom functions to add page logic, layout commands, database lookups and custom scripts. Web Reports Create powerful reports right from the database. All content is live and immediately available to your reports. Web Forms Complete professional database transaction management. No more warning your users not to double click on submit buttons or warning against using the back button. Create simple or complex form layouts. Easily create master-detail forms that populate multiple tables. Table API code generator Advanced database transaction management is standard. Orbit handles all the plumbing to talk to the database tables. This ensures that your data is safe and easy to access in a standard fashion. Page and user defined security You control which pages are public and which are private. Create users who have limited access. Orbit includes advanced security options standard. This ensures that your data is safe. The Orbit developer interface is a web application that also takes advantage of the rich Orbit security model. Ensure that your developers only have access to the applications and objects that they need. Immediate development and page generation Immediate application use in development - no waiting for pages or source code to compile. Pages are dynamically generated from the Orbit source code repository immediately after they are saved. Since developers can see changes immediately this increases their productivity. Advanced search and replace tool Complete application search and replace feature to ferret out all instances of your application code and text. This allows you to easily change common phrases or code.

How does Orbit work?

The core component of the Orbit Web Development Suite is its runtime or Show Page engine. Orbit installs as an application into the Oracle Database. Orbit uses the Oracle HTTP Server powered by Apache to serve dynamic web pages. Orbit can dish content from the Oracle Database or from the web server file system. Oracle HTTP Server comes with the Oracle Database and the Oracle Application Server. Orbit can also be configured to use Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS).

Using its Show Page engine, Orbit sends pages to the web server. In addition to this, other major components include:

• Integrated Development Environment (IDE) - this is an Orbit web application that manages the Orbit environment including configuration and application development.
• Orbit Markup Language engine (OML) - scripting language that extends html to the Oracle data realm. Add powerful effects and display options during page generation with OML.
• Server-Side Tools - Orbit comes with a number of utilities and routines that you can call from your web application.
• Orbit Standard Package Wizard - analyzes your database tables and creates advanced Oracle packages for complete web management.
• Click-stream transaction and page analysis - Orbit collects and reports on key statistics so you know how your application and data is being used.

Orbit: Developer’s View

Orbit provides the developer with a simple, yet powerful, development environment. The Orbit IDE manages the creation of the web application. Orbit stores all source code in the Oracle Database. Using the Administration tools, you can quickly and easily deploy an application from development to test or production. Orbit has five stored development objects:

• Pages - these are the topmost object. A page is a container that controls the web page. It lists the sections attached to the page. A simple report will have at least 3 sections - a common header, a report section that gathers and displays information from the database and a common footer.

• Sections - these contain the actual markup code and text for display. They can be static or dynamic html, xml, oml, or any other language understood by a web browser. They list the queries attached to the section. Queries are used by report and form sections to select data from the database. Sections can also be crafted to act as a function to return a value or string to another section. Sections can also be used on multiple pages.

•  Queries - these contain Structure Query Language (SQL) code to access the database tables. The stored queries are very flexible. You can limit the number of results. The starting record can be specified. Orbit Queries support virtually any legal Oracle SQL syntax. For greater performance and higher security, Queries use the Oracle bind variable feature to pass user-defined search criteria. This avoids the SQL Injection bug that is present in many web application tools. Queries can also be reused on multiple sections.

• Tokens - these are stored variables. Create reusable variables that you can use on many different pages. Save time by storing commonly used text or code.
• Messages - Orbit supports multi-lingual development. Use the Messages feature to create language objects. At runtime, Orbit will display the text in the selected language.

To try an Orbit application see Demos.

Orbit is a powerful and developer friendly web development suite. If it can be done on a web page or in the Oracle Database, Orbit can do it too!

For more information or pricing on Orbit Contact Us.