Application Development

Application Development is a software development process developed initially by James Martin in the 1980s. The methodology involves iterative development, the construction of prototypes, and the use of Computer-aided software engineering (CASE) tools. Traditionally the rapid application development approach involves compromises in usability, features, and/or execution speed.

History

Application development refers to the developing of programming applications and differs from programming itself in that it has a higher level of responsibility, including for requirement capturing and testing. Rapid Application Development was a response to non-agile processes developed in the 1970s, such as the Waterfall model. The problem with previous methodologies was that applications took so long to build that requirements had changed before the system was complete, often resulting in unusable systems. Starting with the ideas of Barry Boehm and Scott Shultz, James Martin developed the Rapid Application Development approach during the 1980s at IBM and finally formalized it by publishing a book in 1991.

Pros and Cons of Application Development

Pros

1. Increased speed of development through methods including rapid prototyping, virtualization of system related routines, the use of CASE tools, and other techniques.
2. Increased end-user utility
3. Larger emphasis on simplicity and usability of GUI design

Cons

1. Reduced Scalability, and reduced features when a RAD developed application starts as a prototype and evolves into a finished application
2. Reduced features occur due to time boxing when features are pushed to later versions in order to finish a release in a short amount of time 

Cross-Platform Rapid Application Development Tools

• BriteWorks by BriteSoft is a codeless, diagrammatic, cross platform rapid application development tool. It is a Model Driven, Service Oriented environment for building applications from scratch or creating a composite application both without coding or code generation. BriteWorks deals with virtually any business application, including those requiring web services or workflow and scheduling. Details can be found at BriteSoft
• Enveria RAD IDE - "Beta Baby" from Kaizen Denki Incorporated
• EDeveloper by Magic Software Enterprises is a cross-platform (Linux, Unix, (Solaris, HPUX, AIX), System i/iSeries, and Windows) and cross-database (MSSQL, Oracle, DB2, Pervasive, DB2400, XML, IFS, Flat File, MySQL, and ODBC) capable rapid application development and composite application development tool with desktop, web services, client-server and browser-based.
• Net Beans
• Revolution Studio is an advanced cross-platform rapid application development tool that delivers executables on Windows, Linux, Solaris, MacOS X Universal Binary and MacOS Classic.
• Lazarus is a cross-platform IDE similar to Borland Delphi.
• LANSA
• LEONARDI is a model-driven framework for RAD that automates the production of GUIs (RIAs or rich clients). Apps are portable across platforms and environments.

Desktop Rapid Application Development Tools

• AppBuilder
• Automated Architecture's Blue Ink
• Borland C++ Builder
• Borland Delphi programming language
• Ultimate++
• Microsoft Visual Basic

Database Rapid Application Development Tools

• Clarion is a data-centric Advanced Rapid Application Development (ARAD) tool featuring roundtrip code generation that preserves all of your own hand-written code while allowing you to re-generate your application as often as needed. It provides reusable metadata to quickly create "corporate quality" applications to manage business data
• FileMaker Pro Advanced
• Omnis Studio is a cross-platform, Rapid Application Development tool or IDE for enterprise and web applications for Windows, Linux, Solaris, and Mac OS X.
• Sybase PowerBuilder
• Xcase Database Design and maintenance tool
• Oracle Forms

Embedded Control Rapid Application Development Tools

• VisSim is a block diagram language for model based embedded system development
• Lab VIEW is a graphical programming language that allows you to program embedded off-the-shelf systems, FPGAs, custom designs

Web Based Rapid Application Development Tools

• Zero Code is a RAD that has matured to meet the needs of development teams tasked with creating enterprise-class applications for on-demand business - with out extensive J2EE re-training.
• CodeCharge Studio Quick builds apps on many different languages (ASP/PHP/PERL/CFML/JSP/...)
• 37 Signals Ruby on Rails
• Adobe ColdFusion
• Gigaframe Web Application Code Generator .NET is a Rapid Application Development tool for creating ASP.NET applications from database schemas.
• GForge Advanced Server a full software development process platform for complete project management and collaboration tool suite with tracking plug-ins for Eclipse IDE as well as Microsoft Visual Studio and other related tools were added to increase developer functionality.
• iRise is a rapid prototyping platform for defining, reviewing, and collaborating on web-based software applications
• Dimension 1 is a rapid rule based business application development platform for non-programmers using a spreadsheet like interface
• Django
• Leonardi
• ActiveGrid Enterprise Web 2.0