MetaWareJ™ is a framework for creating web-based business applications.

"Business applications" means applications that deal with data input, validation and processing, based on a set of business requirements and rules. Examples of these are any type of inventory, invoicing, customer database, sales, application bridges, government work (customs, ports, civil registry, internal revenue), etc.

Applications built with MetaWareJ™ are Java web applications utilizing HTML/JavaScript. They can, however, be installed unmodified on an Android device as a native app. They can also produce a variety of outputs such as charts, PDF reports, CSV exports etc.

The basic design principle of MetaWareJ™ is that screens are simple and homogeneous and that the programmer does not have to deal with them. Producing outputs of different formats does not require re-programming (or designing) the output. In this sense, MetaWareJ is best utilized in business applications where the efficiency of the user interface is one of the primary design goals.

As a developer, all you need is to define the retrieval and update of data, the validations and the screen content in a very simple MetaWareJ™ XML language. You are then free to program your business rules. Your application is ready and is running bug-free. See how easy it is by downloading the manual and reading: Your first MetaWareJ™ application:A small tutorial.

MetaWareJ™ is an open source application, licensed under Apache License, Version 2.0.

The basic building blocks are shown in the diagram.

MetaWareJ™ consists of 4 main parts:

1. An XML language which defines how to access the data, how to process them, how and where to display them.
2. The main processing logic which receives and processes the request from the user using the definitions in the XML files.
3. A database reader and a database writer to handle database transactions.
4. User interface generators which show the result to the user in the requested format.

MetaWareJ™ reads the XML definitions, accesses the data from the database and displays them to the user. An application developer needs to handle the parts shown in yellow in the diagram: The XML definitions and the custom business logic. The rest are handled by MetaWareJ™.