In this article, I am going to cover the overview of a new module called Data Entities, which has been introduced as AgilePoint NX 7.0 release. I will be covering some of the more advanced features around security for Data Entities in the next blog post.

Data Entities are software components that are modeled after real-life objects or concepts. App developers can mimic real-life relationships by defining relationships between entities. Entities let you to create a business-focused definition of your organization’s data for use within apps, which lets you securely store, and manage data that is used by business applications. Data within Apps is stored within a set of entities. An entity is a set of records used to store data, similar to how a table stores data within a database. Data Entities includes a base set of standard entities that cover typical scenarios, but you can also create custom entities specific to your organization and populate them with apps. App designers can then use AgilePoint NX eForms to build rich applications using this data.

This approach offers the following unique benefits:

• It simplifies the creation of powerful, form-based, data-driven applications that draw data from multiple sources.
• It simplifies the creation of end-to-end process-based applications.
• Non-programmers, through visual modeling, can design data entities.
• Both the metadata and data are abstracted from the application layer. App developers don’t need to worry about the details of how they’re stored.
• Data is securely stored so that users can view/edit/create/delete data only if granted access. Role-based security allows you to control access to entities for different users and groups within your organization.
• Data entities can reside on AgilePoint NX or on-premises systems.
• AgilePoint NX 7.0 provides 100+ entities that are typically used in day-to-day business operations. NX 7.0 also provides 200+ pick lists. These lists save app developers lots of research and design.
• Citizen developers can create database tables without knowledge of SQL and without using any external tools.
• Data entities are stored in a database to facilitate connectivity to enterprise reporting and analytics tools.
• Data types and relationships become rich metadata and are leveraged directly within AgilePoint NX Apps.
• Entity Designer can define business rules, validation, and even call data entities from workflows. This approach ensures data quality and drives business processes.

Let’s see how to design a new Data Entity.