Vintage Flock: the Info Repository

Rapid application development (RAD) refers to a type of software development life cycle which uses minimal planning in favor of rapid prototyping. The "planning" of software written in RAD is interleaved with writing the software itself. The lack of extensive pre-planning generally allowed software to be written much faster, and makes it more flexible to change in requirement.

RAD calls for the interactive use of structured techniques and prototyping to define user's requirements and design the final system. Using structured techniques the developer first builds preliminary data models and business process models of the business requirements. Prototyping then helps the analyst and users to verify those requirements and to formally refine the data and process models. The cycle of models, then prototypes, then models, then prototypes and so forth on, ultimately results in a combined business requirements and technical design statement to be used for constructing new systems.^[1]

RAD approaches may entail compromises in functionality and performance in exchange for enabling faster development and facilitating application maintenance.

Web Based Rapid Development Application Tool

• Active Agenda's code generator is a RAD development framework using XML specification files and the PHP development language.
• Alpha Five is a commercial RAD development environment for both client and web-server based database driven applications. This tool is typically classified with commercial packages such as Microsoft Access and FileMaker.
• BFC is a RAD framework for both client and server-side development in the .NET environment.
• CakePHP is a RAD development framework using the PHP development language.
• CodeCharge Studio is a visual RAD development environment for web-based database driven application development. CodeCharge Studio places emphasis on code generation technology to provide ASP.NET, PHP, JSP, Servlets, ColdFusion and Perl language support.
• Zend Framework is an open source, object-oriented web application framework licensed under the New BSD License.
• Django is an open source web application framework, written in Python, which loosely follows the model-view-controller design pattern
• IBM Rational Business Developer Extension is a cross-platform, Rapid Application Development IDE for creating enterprise and web applications and services for Windows, Linux, Unix (Solaris, HPUX, AIX), System z and System i
• 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 asMicrosoft Visual Studio and other related tools were added to increase developer functionality.
• LibreSource
• NConstruct is Windows and Web rapid enterprise application development tool and environment for .NET framework.
• nuBuilder is an open source browser based database development tool which stores all forms, reports, data and any custom code in MySQL and displays the content dynamically.
• Oracle Application Development Framework uses Oracle's JDeveloper a FREE IDE that supports ADF's J2EE based framework.
• Panther (and its open source version POSSL) is a cross-platform (Windows, Unix, Linux; TUI, GUI, Web), cross-database RAD toolset for development of C/S and n-tier database oriented applications.
• Ruby on Rails sponsored by 37signals
• SednaSpace is a browser based Rapid Application Development tool, that generates code in technologies like AJAX, C#, VB.Net, Java and many other.
• Symfony
• Thoroughbred T-WEB is a Web RAD tool
• Web2py is a RAD framework for web-based database driven applications with key features including in-browser coding support, admin/design interface, DAL (database abstraction layer), and translation support.
• WebDev
• Wavemaker Visual Ajax Studio is an open-source, browser-based IDE based on Dojo, Spring and Hibernate.
• Visual WebGui Visual WebGui (VWG) is an open-source rapid application development (RAD) framework for AJAX & Silverlight GUIs. The platform presents a new approach to applying desktop usability to the web by viewing it as an extension to a desktop rather than web
• cakeApp an online rapid development tool with WYSIWYG SQL editor and framework based on CakePHP.