Kuali Nervous System (KNS)

Why Use KNS?

  • Facilitates easy integration with the other modules of Rice
  • Simplify your development environment by leveraging a framework that eliminates the mundane aspects of software development
  • Ensure visual and technical consistency across your applications
  • Easily add common functional end-user features to your application with minimal coding

What is KNS?

The Kuali Nervous System (KNS) is a software development framework aimed at allowing developers to quickly build web-based business applications in an efficient and agile fashion. KNS is an abstracted layer of "glue" code that provides developers easy integration with the other Rice components. In this scope, KNS provides features to developers for dynamically generating user interfaces that allow end users to search, view details about records, interact electronically with business processes, and much more. KNS adds visual, functional, and architectural consistency to any system that is built with it, helping to ensure easier and more efficient maintainability of your software.

KNS Features

  • Data Dictionary

    Describe your business entities in XML and leave the rest up to the framework. This component is the glue that brings many of the other features together. Specify labels, help content, field descriptions, and more, all in a flexible and customizable fashion that doesn't require Java programming changes for future customization.

  • Lookups and Inquiries

    Leverage the data dictionary entry for a business entity to automatically enable searching (lookups) and detail viewing (inquiries) of records in the database.

  • Maintenance Documents

    Eliminate mundane programming tasks that are required for building data entry screens by leveraging the data dictionary to automatically render, save, and route (using the workflow engine) record changes for approval and persistence in the database.

  • Notes and Attachments Features

    Add notes and attachments with ease to any document or business entity, including automatic integration with the maintenance document feature.

  • Custom Attributes

    Don't like the fields on a business entity? Use this feature to add "reporting only" fields to it at runtime without touching the backing database table or the Java code.

  • Security

    Includes data encryption services as well as a framework for masking data for certain viewers.

  • Identity Management Integration

    Integrates with the Kuali Identity Management (KIM) module of Rice. Defines and implements permissions in KIM that pertain to the various pieces of functionality provided by the KNS (i.e. Edit Document, Use Screen, Inquire Into Records, Look Up Records, etc.)

  • Workflow Integration

    KNS provides easy KEW integration for all documents in the system.

  • Tag Libraries

    An extensive set of tag libraries that can be used to build screens with a consistent look-and-feel.

  • Pluggable Business Rules

    Implement your business rules in a self-contained Java class. If you need to change them later, only change the code in that class without touching any of the other core code. Wire up which rules class to use in your data dictionary file.

  • Configurable Help

    Easily apply help to all scopes - field level, business entity level, document level, etc.

  • Configurable System Parameters

    Register constants in the system, and control their values at run time without having to change any code behind the scenes.