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Klipfolio Dashboard Architecture
and Planning Guide

What is the difference between Klipfolio Dashboard and Klipfolio Dashboard Developer Edition?

To simplify development and deployment we have two applications each specifically designed for developing Klips or viewing Klips.

Klipfolio Dashboard Developer Edition is a rapid development environment designed to simplify the development of new Klips. Once developed and tested you can deploy these new Klips to the relevant business users who can use the Klipfolio Dashboard to view them.

The Developer Edition includes a step-by-step workflow, templates, debugging tools, code samples, KPI examples, demonstrations, and documentation in an easy-to-use development environment specifically designed to help you streamline Klip production.

Klipfolio Dashboard is the viewer that is deployed to each user's desktop and is the container they use to view or launch Klips on their desktop.

What is a Klip and what can it do for me?

Klips are XML files that contain markup, styles and JavaScript and provide the Klipfolio Dashboard platform with rules for the retrieval, interpretation, and presentation of information sources such as flat file formatted data, XML based data feeds, relational databases and multi-dimensional databases/OLAP, in order to simplify the visibility of business critical data.

Klipfolio Dashboard in Your Environment

To better understand Klipfolio Dashboard, where it will fit into your infrastructure, and how it can provide the metrics you need, it's helpful to think of its components in terms of data, infrastructure, and processing.

Klipfolio Dashboard in Your Environment

To better understand Klipfolio Dashboard, where it will fit into your infrastructure, and how it can provide the metrics you need, it’s helpful to think of its components in terms of data, infrastructure, and processing.

Klipfolio and your data sources

Klipfolio Dashboard can handle data from multiple sources, and combines and refreshes that data in Klips – small but powerful XML-based desktop modules. Klips are developed using the Klipfolio Dashboard Developer Edition. These Klips are then added to Klipfolio Dashboard and provide a complete and accurate picture of key performance indicators (KPIs) on users’ desktops. There are many ways that Klips can get data. For example, Klips can go directly to the data source, request a copy of data, and do all of the processing needed to get information. Typically, though, you will want Klips to do as little work as possible and will delegate processing to your servers.

The ability of Klipfolio Dashboard to deal with almost any type of data source means you can rapidly develop Klips using Klipfolio Dashboard Developer Edition and get them deployed to user communities using your existing systems and client-side processing, with minimal IT input. You can then target areas where you want to fine tune how Klipfolio Dashboard handles data, and gradually move processing to your servers.

Klipfolio Dashboard can access data from any network accessible file and from external sources via the Internet and extranets. Being designed to use data from almost any source, Klipfolio Dashboard can leverage existing systems and databases, including Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Business Intelligence (BI), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and Sales Force Automation (SFA) systems.

Klipfolio accesses data in three ways:

• Flat file. Most web applications can export data on a periodic basis to an XML or CSV flat file. You can also choose to write an ASP or PHP script to extract the data from your application and use it to refresh an XML or CSV file. Klipfolio can read the file and parse its contents into meaningful information.
  
• Direct access. Klipfolio has numerous data-engines: ODBC, OLAP, Microsoft Reporting Services, Salesforce and SOAP. You can use them to query and extract data directly from the source without needing an intermediate flat file. Klipfolio parses the data into XML, to which styles can be applied for presentation.
  
• HTML Parsing. Klipfolio can extract data directly from existing HTML. As a result, where data feeds aren’t yet available you can use any static or dynamic web application as a data source. Using a combination of cascading style sheets (CSS) to parse XML, and JavaScript to create custom logic, a Klip can mimic the interaction of a browser with a remote site.

Whether it’s in XML, OLAP, ODBC, reporting services, Web services like SOAP, a variety of legacy web formats, or other formats, Klipfolio can access and process the data needed to provide KPI dashboard users with real-time information. It makes that information available by dashboard users on local, wide area, and virtual private networks. For users in regulated industries such as heathcare or financial services, increasingly tighter compliance legislation requires that access to data be limited to authenticated users. Klipfolio gives you the option of using existing Active Directory/LDAP services to ensure that only properly authenticated users can view the information displayed in a Klip.

Klipfolio in your infrastructure

Klipfolio Dashboard was designed to fit into any size enterprise IT environment, to have little impact on processing resources, and to scale easily to accommodate increasing numbers of users.

Klipfolio deployment

You can deploy Klipfolio Dashboard on laptops and desktops, either manually or using a deployment utility, such as Citrix. Later in this paper we provide information about the deployment approaches we’ve found most effective, based on number of users.

 

Klipfolio Dashboard ties into your existing gateways, firewalls, Active Directory/LDAP services, and security policies to ensure that data is protected and can be used by only properly identified and authorized personnel. It supports HTTPS and SSL, and both basic and session-based user authentication. Klipfolio Dashboard can be signed by Microsoft Authenticode, and Klips can be digitally signed and encrypted to secure their logic.

Klipfolio performance and scalability

The Klipfolio dashboard client is just over a megabyte in size and consumes negligible client memory and performance resources – usually between 5 and 25MB, depending on the number of Klips and their content.

Klipfolio Dashboard can process very large amounts of remote content and simultaneously refresh dozens of Klips using minimal CPU resources. This is possible because it features:

 

• A general caching system that ensures images downloaded to Klips are refreshed only when necessary
  
• Context-aware caching tuned by the Klip developer to specify that images should be refreshed as required.
  
• HTTP 304 Not Modified, Last-Modified, and E-Tag support that ensures only changed files are processed
  

As a Klip developer, you can control resource and performance impact by setting appropriate refresh rates, pre-processing data server-side, or limiting the amount of data Klipfolio Dashboard requests without impacting its end-user value.

Klipfolio Dashboard has proven to be highly scalable, with single customer deployments of over 45,000 users and data sources containing millions of records. With no server component to act as a bottleneck processing can be done centrally, on the client side, or both.

Klipfolio processing and information delivery

The power of Klipfolio Dashboard comes from its ability to process data needed to monitor and make users immediately aware of changes in key metrics. It does this using:

• An interface that displays changes in critical information
• A JavaScript Runtime engine, XML Parser, and Data Access Engine to process data
• Cryptographic services to ensure security
• A core for installing, uninstalling, and upgrading Klipfolio Dashboard

The Klipfolio Dashboard interface

The Klipfolio Dashboard user interface displays desktop dashboards made up of Klips. The interface lets you determine where on the desktop to display the dashboard and whether it is locked or floating. There are toolbars, icons, skins, sounds, and language preference settings. As a developer you can make these available for users to customize their dashboards, or turn them off to ensure standard dashboard deployments that users can’t alter.

To refresh the information displayed in a dashboard, each Klip periodically:

• Accesses the remote content source
• Parses the incoming data and converts it to XML
• Processes the XML
• Displays new and updated content

Klipfolio JavaScript runtime processing

Behind the Klipfolio interface is the JavaScript Runtime environment needed to process data and display information in Klips.

Each Klip in your deployment is provided with an independent runtime environment for data processing and script execution. For Klips that do more than display simple data, this is where the heavy-lifting involved in processing data takes place.

Each runtime in turn provides a compartmentalized and secure instance of the tools and APIs within Klipfolio for the Klip to use as needed. Runtimes share objects and data using the marshaled DataPool API or by cooperating using a server.

The lifecycle of these runtimes mirror the lifecycle of the user interface for each Klip. The runtimes are created when the Klip is loaded, and terminated when the Klip is removed. All information contained or generated within a runtime is removed when it is closed.

Klipfolio Dashboard XML parser and data access engines

Processing involves parsing XML using Klipfolio’s own very fast, non-validating XML parser. Using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) syntax, a Klip can tell Klipfolio Dashboard’s XML parser how to extract elements from incoming XML.

Klipfolio data access engines

Klipfolio data access engines enable Klips to access remote content through HTTP/HTTPS, either directly or using Basic User Authentication. They also enable access, through the File engine, to read content from any file accessible using a Windows Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path with full Active Directory/LDAP support. They enable access through the TCP/IP engine to read content from any remote TCP/IP server.

Cryptographic services

Klipfolio can use Public Key Cryptology to digitally encrypt and sign Klips. A digitally signed Klip leaves the JavaScript visible but prevents it from being modified.

When Klipfolio Dashboard loads a digitally signed Klip, it validates the signature block against the file loaded. If they don’t match, Klipfolio assumes the script has been tampered with and does not run it.

The Klipfolio Dashboard core

The Klipfolio Dashboard core provides the Klipfolio Dashboard application framework and implements the logic for the installer, uninstaller, and cache management for images and XML.

The core includes a full graphics rendering engine that supports GIF, JPG, ICO, and 8-bit and 24-bit PNG images with alpha channels. Klipfolio Dashboard uses a bicubic spline interpolation algorithm to quickly scale images for display within a Klip, tooltip, or pop-up alert. Users never have to resize Klip images, because Klipfolio does it automatically.

If Klipfolio Dashboard was deployed manually, the core checks for remote upgrades of Klips and of the Klipfolio Dashboard application. If Klipfolio was deployed using a software deployment utility, then upgrading Klipfolio and adding, modifying, and removing Klips is done by upgrading the Klipfolio Dashboard application and its files on the software image.