How Modern Code Generation Works

HOW MODERN CODE
GENERATION WORKS
An insider’s guide to the inner workings of application generator Iron Speed Designer.
White PaperAugust 27, 2003
Iron Speed, Inc.1953 Landings DriveMountain View, CA 94043
http://www.ironspeed.comHOW IRON SPEED DESIGNER GENERATES APPLICATIONS
Table of Contents
Application Generators—A Solution for IT Departments . .1
An Overview of the Application Generation Process . . . . 2Step 1: Create Layout Pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3Step 2: Link to the Database Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Step 3: Bind Components to Data Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Step 4: Generate the Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Layout Pages and Code Generation Tags . . . . . . . . . . 4Code Generation Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5Data Display Tags: FieldValue and Record . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Linking to the Database Tables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
The Component Binding Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
The Code Generation Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11Presentation Layer Generation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12Application Layer Generation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13Database Layer Generation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
IRON SPEED, INC. ! 1953 LANDINGS DRIVE ! MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA 94043 ! http://www.ironspeed.com iHOW IRON SPEED DESIGNER GENERATES APPLICATIONS
Application Generators—A Solution for IT Departments
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.
Yet, there seems to be no other choice. Many IT departments don’t have An application generator enough junior staff to handle all the repetitive tasks. Even when junior staff is should automatically available, there may not be time for proper training or code reviews, and generate … senior staff members end up doing the work anyway. #User interface web pages, including sophisticated features like multi-table To address these problems, IT departments are looking for reliable and easily joins, reports, and filters learned tools to better automate and manage the development process. Applications generators, a new class of turbo-charged code generation tools, #SQL statements are now proving to be a significant part of the solution.#Transaction management code#Application Generator In highly automated fashion, application generators create working Workflow processes application programs from a basic set of inputs and jumpstart the #Workflow reporting development process by generating most of the application code. Generated #Triggers and alerts code is, by nature, more reliable and bug-free than code written by hand, and #End-user access/account reduces the bug-fixing and testing effort as well. management 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 d... [download for more]