Jigsaw is best described as a toolkit of components and templates, which can be configured in a variety of ways to suit each business purpose. Jigsaw Platform utilises Microsoft® COM/OLE and ActiveX® technologies, thus the target hardware platform is PC based rather than Unix, and any browser must have ActiveX capability. Because Jigsaw has been designed with strict adherence to Microsoft development standards, the components can be easily integrated with any other solutions based on these technologies (including standard Microsoft products such as Internet Explorer and Excel).

Jigsaw components are available separately, or as a package, and we also provide integration services, should you wish to combine Jigsaw components with other compatible products, or present a particular look and feel to the display components.

Jigsaw's infrastructure is based on 3 families of components, which allow the data display attributes to be completely separated from the delivery mechanism. These families are:

Display Controls
which provide the ability to display a variety of data, such as News, Quotes, Charts, according to a set of attributes (methods and events), which can be defined for each constituent control. They interact with the container controls for navigation, screen management, linking between controls, and some aspects of look and feel.

Container Controls
provide a programmatically open environment in which to build Jigsaw document applications. This environment supports application customisation features such as user interface navigation, menus, window management, toolbars, visual linking, and screen management (such as save and restore). The container interface is accessible using standard tools such as Microsoft Visual C++®, Visual Basic®, VB scripting etc. It allows display controls (either Jigsaw controls, third party’s or customer’s) to be "plugged in" as they become available without additional container development. The "language" with which the container controls communicate with display controls and datafeed controls is the Jigsaw Interface, an API providing rich functionality and flexible attributes.

Datafeed Controls & Servers
these Jigsaw components manage the flow of data from the appropriate data source, such as Reuters RMDS, TIBCO Rendezvous®, Jiji  etc. The Jigsaw infrastructure fully encapsulates the difference in delivery environment so that the display controls can be re-used with different data feed platforms, and new datafeed platforms can be plugged in as required. Cascading servers can be arranged in order to multi-cast data to a larger number of users.