Application Engine Fundamentals

Application Engine comprises two distinct components—a designer where you define your batch program and the runtime environment where you run and monitor your program.

In Application Engine, a program is a set of SQL statements, PeopleCode, and program control actions that enable looping and conditional logic. A program is defined in Application Designer to perform a business process. You can use Application Engine for straight, row-by-row processing, but the most efficient Application Engine programs are written to perform set-based processing.

Application Engine does not generate SQL or PeopleCode. It runs the SQL and PeopleCode that you include in an Application Engine action as part of your program.

Application Engine is designed for batch processing where you have data that must be processed without user intervention—for example, calculating salaries in payroll processing (although not printing the checks). Another example might be converting money from one currency to another.