The intention of Glasir is to provide the missing link to a full and end-to-end development platfrom powered by Oracle ATG. The Glasir platform complements ATG and promotes agility, visibilty and strong functional contracts, allowing for rapid, predictable deployments, proof-of-concept projects, product demonstrations and extensions.

Oracle Commerce (formely known as ATG), one of the most powerful e-commerce frameworks in the world (if not the most powerful) intentionally leaves the last step of implementation platform open to the end user. Many ATG customers, partners, integrators and consultants have attempted to perfect the way the final product is to be built. In our past 12 years we have collected the most effective components to implementing ATG in the real world and built a platform, called Glasir, that empowers the end user without impeding the power of the Oracle ATG product.

• FASTER TIME TO MARKET

  • Glasir brings working software from day one, continuous delivery and a groundbreaking approach to productive software development.

• LEANER DEVELOPMENT TEAM

  • Glasir allows each member of the development team to be more self-sufficient. There is no longer any hard requirements to have a dedicated on-call DBA, or dedicated on-call build master in order to remain productive.

• LEANER PRODUCTION SUPPORT

  • With higher levels of automation, you no longer need a large organization to support your application.

• TIGHER CONNECTION BETWEEN BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY

  • Glasir implements executable functional contracts, allowing functional business requirements to be continually validated against the code base throughout development.

• THE HOLY GRAIL OF VERSIONING

  • Glasir unifies code, configuration, data model and test data into one revision line in source control. Allowing canonical versioning of the application - there is no more ambiguity around what is being tested. When a Glasir-powered ATG application runs, it can build its own database and populate it with the correct database tables. Glasir takes the extra step of also managing the data required to run any version of the application as part of this process. Any test data sets that are needed for a version of the application to run are automatically imported, both into non-versioned as well as into any versioned schemas. The unification of code, configuration, data model and data allows for one canonical state to be represented by one unique version in source control, which in turn allows for a high level of certainty in version management without the need for a large support organization (read: it saves money, time and brings higher level of accuracy).

• IN-MEMORY DATABASE

  • Glasir works with all databases supported by ATG and adds support for the H2 in-memory database, allowing the application to run in an independent, headless mode. This allows for automated functional testing to be a natural part of Continuous Delivery and it allows for developers to run the full ATG application without having to install a separate database.

• UP AND RUNNING IN RECORD TIME

  • When a member of the devleopment team works with Glasir, the application starts up with one command. This includes database, data, configuration and code. The entire process takes minutes. This allows anyone, including web designers and other contributors who do not have deep ATG knowledge, to work with a full application context. Another productivity perk: when running Glasir on a mac or on linux, developers can edit the application codebase and see the changes real-time, without having to restart the application.

• STRONG FUNCTIONAL CONTRACTS

  • Functional specifications are written in plain English, possibly by business analysts together with the end client, then quickly extended into simple functional tests. This allows for project leadership to create an executable functional contract with the end customer. The functional tests are validated against every incremental change of the code base, catching any deviation from agreed-upon functionality before the code base is released for testing. The concept of executable functional contracts allows for a more useful scope discussion prior to implementation, opening up possibility for more accurate project estimates.

• NO NEED TO INSTALL ANYTHING

  • Glasir can be configured to automatically download and install everything for you, including ATG, the container (like JBOSS) and any other dependencies. Everything is closely managed with version tags. This means the user does not have to run any installers to get up and running. It also means that when the entire team should receive a patch upgrade to the ATG framework, it is a simple matter of updating one central repository and every team member will be automatically updated. This also means there is no longer any need to pass virtual machines around between team members - the entire application context is created from a lightweight source control repository.