Wednesday 9 April 2014

Platform Independence

A key advantage of CA Gen is the platform independent nature of the models coupled with code generation for platform specific native code that offers high performance and access to native operating system features and functions.

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.