NextAge's security class is not a replacement for groupware, or even meant to compete against groupware. The security class doesn’t provide any real UI components, instead it provides a foundation to configure default security at design time, and then have that security adjusted at runtime by a “superuser” without requiring additional development work.

The security class is simple terms is a call to a “go – no go” function. It does all the work of testing the overrides, etc. and returns either a True or False.

Part of what makes the Security class powerful is that the setting are defaulted at design time but can be overwritten at runtime. This is accomplished by maintaining a “SecurityDetail” file. This file has the Item being tested (be it a screen, function, whatever the developer decides to call it), a category, and an access level. All of that information is actual passed with the call to check the security. What the security class does, is checks the “SecurityDetail” file to see if the item already exist, if it does then the values from the file are used, otherwise a record is created in the “SecurityDetail” table with the default values supplied. This means that if the record in the “SecurityDetail” table is changed, it would override the defaults.

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