Architected Rapid Application Component Based Development Framework and IDE

Visual Component Based Development framework for rapid application and systems development

Visit Buildap powered project hosted at https://e-records.dev.java.net/. The running instance of project you can find at http://e-records.buildap.com/.

Buildap (aka Visual Software Circuit Board) is a Visual Component Based Development framework for rapid application development and systems integration. It is an open source tool for development of enterprise software applications using Architected Model Driven (AMD) and Component Based Development (CBD) approaches. Buildap can be used for design and development of web applications (e.g. ecommerce shops), as well as standalone and distirbuted Java applications. As a proof of concept Pet Store well-known ecommerce application was developed using Buildap framework.

In contrast to UML based tools it uses concept of coarse grained software components versus objects. The following principles make Buildap tool different than UML design and development enviromnets and frameworks:

no shared memory between components
asynchronous communications between components
components are execiting in independent threads
hierarchical composition of components into more complex components
message or event based architectures support
anonymous collaboration (component doesn’t ‘know’ which components it is collaborating with)
connectors are first order elements

Architected Rapid Application Development (ARAD) is a new category of tools with a proven ROI edge, according to a recently completed user survey by Gartner, Inc. ARAD tools represent a middle way between the simplified RAD tools and the complexity of the Architected Model Driven (AMD)approach, says Mike Burba, a program manager for Compuware, one of the vendors whose customers Gartner studied. “It’s kind of a pragmatic middle of the road approach,” he says of ARAD. According to a recent Gartner Inc. study, ARAD tools will be mandatory for mainstream companies moving to build service-oriented applications. The study noted that ARAD tools improved return on investment to as much as 15 times what it had been when traditional development approaches were used.

Modern software systems are becoming more and more complex while productivity of the development remains on the same level. Developers are repeatedly reinventing the wheels coding similar programs over and over again. Even within the same enterprise the reuse rate is low and waste is enormous. Lifetime of software product is short because of high modernization price. Finally, the integration cost of existed system components is high due to high learning curve of different interfaces, non-trivial setup and manual programming of glue code. Developers often prefer to develop from scratch rather then use third party products. UML tools certainly improve productivity but they dont support large scale architecture design.

Approaches like Component Based Development and Architect Driven Development suppose to solve these issues. Unfortunately they are not yet backed with mature tools. Studies show that such tools can improve the product in orders. Buildap is providing an intuitive and powerful instrument and framework for application development with ambitions to reach an unprecedented level of visibility, productivity and quality of software project due to high reuse of software components.

Buildap (aka VSCB Visual Software Circuit Board) is one of the first open source Architected Rapid Application Development tools, which employs an model-driven component-based development and component assembly methodology towards the rapid design, integration, prototyping and development of large software applications. Application of Circuit Board technique to software development makes Buildap a unique and improves both productivity of the development process and quality of the resulted software products. The visual component assembly approach makes even complex software architecture easy to visualize and comprehend.

Buildap is a free software and based on open source GPL licence. Buildap early completed functional version is available for download and can be used as a free tool for rapid web design and development, database application development, software engineering and generic software development. Buildap will allow to build complex application without any programming. Buildap project is hosted on SourceForge open source hosting server.