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In recent years, innovative features of popular web applications have dramatically raised user expectations for software applications of all kinds. Corporate management now expects internally developed applications to include these new state-of-the-art features, and to support industry standard platforms and technologies.
These raised expectations come bundled with mounting pressure to produce more in less time. With static or shrinking head count, IT departments must find ways to improve productivity, meet rising expectations, migrate projects to the latest technology standards, and reduce the development backlog.
In such an environment, wasting time writing unnecessary code is especially painful. The last thing IT departments need is their senior developers working on low-level, time-intensive hand-coding tasks, such as generating routine SQL statements and coding web pages.
Once a particular set of functionality has been decided, sophisticated application generators deliver code that is always consistent with that design, and produces all the necessary pages for the entire 3-tier architecture.
Further, application generators have the ability to generate complex web pages with database-connected components, including forms, reports, filters, and other advanced navigation features.
Today, application generators produce code that's comparable to code senior developers would write if they had the time.
Modern application generators do all of the following:
1. Start from scratch with an application-specific data model.
2. Create everything needed for a functional application, link everything together, and deliver a bug-free, executable application as a starting point.
3. Automatically generate source code that is native to your target platform or environment, and flows naturally into a pre-existing development environment.
4. Provide complete and well-organized source code that's easy to modify.
5. Preserve modifications/customizations during subsequent application regenerations.
Iron Speed Designer is a modern application generator, producing custom applications for the Microsoft .NET Framework. Iron Speed Designer technology supports time-tested rapid application development (RAD) practices. Because it generates so much of the infrastructure code, you can produce more functionality at a faster rate.
This paper provides an inside look into how Iron Speed Designer generates application program code you can trust.
An Overview of the Application Generation Process
Iron Speed Designer works by translating a declarative description of your application (for instance, HTML pages containing code generation instructions) into a working n-tier application with well-partitioned service layers. It is this declarative programming approach that separates Iron Speed Designer from the code generators of the past, as well as from component- specific code generated by IDEs, application servers, and independent component products which generate code specific to a particular platform or purpose.
Getting started using this declarative approach is straightforward, and follows the process most developers use when writing applications from scratch. You provide two primary inputs: your application's web-based user interface pages, and the underlying database tables. From these two basic inputs, Iron Speed Designer does the rest.
The code generation process is highly iterative. You can add user interface pages, databound controls and database tables to your application in any order. You can also customize the base classes generated by Iron Speed Designer or imbed existing or third party code assets. Simply regenerate your application at any time to see the effect of your changes. Once created, all of your customizations and extensions are automatically preserved with each new iteration. As such, Iron Speed Designer enables you to quickly accommodate new requirements as they appear over time.
Figure 1 The four basic steps of generating applications with Iron Speed Designer
Step 1: HTML, usually created by a web designer, gives the layout for each page of the application.
Step 2: You specify what database tables need to be associated with the application.
Step 3: The unbound components referenced in the layout pages are bound to the appropriate data sources (such as database tables).
Step 4: The application generator uses this information to create a three-tier, executable .NET application.
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Step 1: Create Layout Pages
Although you can begin with either your user interface or your database layer, the most likely first step you will take is to create a series of "layout pages" that represent your application's web-based user interface. Layout pages are HTML with code generation tags inserted at the location for each databound control.
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