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Rapid Business Modeling with a Java Graphical User Interface
Authors

David Bailey
Organization: David Bailey Consultancy
URL: http://www.dbaileyconsultancy.co.uk
Hans-Gerlach Woudboer
Organization: Rapid Business Modeling
URL: http://www.rapidbusinessmodeling.com
Conference

2007 Wolfram Technology Conference
Conference location

Champaign, IL
Description

Abstract

The Rapid Business Modeling suite can create business models and perform customer profitability analysis and optimization. This process uses the existing Business Modeling Package together with a Java graphical user interface based on the Super Widget Package (SWP) to provide its interactive interface. Customer profitability analysis enables a company to gain an understanding of the drivers of individual customer profit, and to take practical and focused steps to improve overall performance. The underlying business modeling approach uses the concept of activity based costing in a multidimensional way.

This talk will give a brief outline of the concept of the Rapid Business Modeling suite and demonstrate how the SWP GUI interface unleashes the full potential of the Business Modeling suite for non-Mathematica users. The application runs in kernel-only mode (KOM) and therefore requires no notebook as a front end. It has the expected look and feel of a state-of-the-art high-performance management tool.

However, this is just one example of what is possible by bridging between the Mathematica world--mostly used in academia and research--and the business world. As a side feature, we demonstrate how easy it is to rapidly deploy new tailor-made software applications for any kind of business.

The second half of the talk will focus on the GUI interface itself. Prior to Version 6.0, the only way to create a GUI application using Mathematica was to use Java--directly or indirectly. Although Version 6.0 contains many GUI elements, we demonstrate that a Java GUI presents a much more industry-standard look and feel for applications, such as the Rapid Business Modeling suite.

The SWP itself has been enhanced in a variety of ways to provide the functionality for this application. It now uses J/Link rather than the GUIKit to provide the link to Java for performance and stability.

The talk will emphasize those GUI features that are available via the SWP, but which are not part of the Version 6.0 front end (or are not as well developed), such as the fast flexible Java tables, the multiple document interface (MDI), and multi-level menus that can be selectively enabled/disabled.

Although end-users of the Rapid Business Modeling suite will, of course, require Mathematica on their machines, they will typically start the application like any other--by clicking a Rapid Business Modeling suite icon. The talk will describe a variety of subtle issues related to this use of Mathematica in kernel-only mode.
Subjects

*Wolfram Technology
*Wolfram Technology > Linking Technology > J/Link
*Wolfram Technology > Programming
URL

http://www.wolfram.com/news/events/techconf2007/
Downloads Download Wolfram CDF Player

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RapidBusinessModeling.nb (1 MB) - Mathematica Notebook [for Mathematica 6.0]