The abstraction provided by the CA Gen
model allows the developer to concentrate on the business requirements without
having to be excessively concerned with the details of the underlying technical
implementation.
Platform independence means that an
application be deployed to multiple target environments from the same model,
but also that the model is not tied to a specific combination of operating
system, language, compiler, database or framework versions. This means that the
underlying third party software stack can be updated without requiring changes
to the Gen models.
With Rapide and Gen, the developer is
shielded from the often considerable effort required to keep the underlying
software stack up to date and consistent. As examples of this, the changes made
in the Apple iOS APIs between version 6 and 7 or the complexity of keeping Java
frameworks up to date have typically
resulted in a considerable amount of effort for projects that code
directly using the native frameworks. With Rapide the upgrade to iOS7 was
implemented by simply installing a new version of the Rapide runtimes with no
change to the models or generated code.
Rapide extends CA Gen’s capabilities for
platform independence by providing support for multiple platforms (Browser,
Mobile and Desktop). A Rapide application comprises platform independent generated
Java code and a Java based cross-platform runtime that ensures consistent
behaviour and single-sourcing for all supported platforms.
