Application Designer simplifies the creation of highly interactive browser pages. Pages that are created on the basis of Application Designer are accessible by a normal HTTP URL. It is very easy to pass parameters through the URL into the page. The semantics of the pages is not defined in any way and is left open to the application.

Typically an application consists of a couple of pages that are started from some environment applications. There are certain usage scenarios:

• You may build content pages that are responsible, for example, for editing a certain business document or a certain master data object. You can integrate these pages into an existing portal environment. In this case, the portal environment typically builds the frame around the contents: through the frame, a user accesses the functions to be executed. Application Designer pages run inside the existing portal.

• You may use the Application Designer workplace in order to embed content pages into a workplace environment. The Application Designer workplace is an Application Designer application itself that is responsible for building up a flexible function tree on the left. Content can be started from the function tree. It is possible to have multiple content pages open at the same time - this can be compared with multi document interfaces you may know from word processing systems.

• You may use Application Designer to develop your own workplace environment in which you arrange your functions to be accessed by the user in exactly the way you want.