The Application Server is the heart of Redbex. All of the crucial business logic is handled in this tier and therefore the overall system functionality and behaviour is defined by the Application Server. The Application Server provides services that clients (like the Smart Client, or other software systems) can use.

The following chapters introduce the basic concepts behind the Application Server and explain how things work in the Application Server. It helps to understand how data is handled by the Application Server and therefore gives deep insight into how Redbex works.

Figure 1 shows the logical structure of the Application Server. The Application Server's functionality can be divided in four logical layers: Content, Structure, Processing and Presentation where the higher layers build on the data and functionality of the lower layers. All of these four layers make use of Common Services that provide a common infrastructure to the layers.

The basic data on which the system operates is the content; this is the valuable data that you store within the system. The structure layer contains the methods the system provides for organizing the content. The processing layer transforms data, does calculations and optionally also persists the result as new content. The presentation layer presents content and processed content in a visual way that allows for easy interpretation of data.

Figure 1: Logical structure of the Application Server