Release 10.1A: OpenEdge Development:
AppBuilder

Introduction

According to many industry estimates, in applications with a graphic user interface, the GUI itself might account for as much as 75% of the total application code.

The OpenEdge AppBuilder tool is a Rapid Application Prototyping/Development (RAP/RAD) tool similar in concept to, for example, Microsoft’s Visual development tools. The main component of AppBuilder is a What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) interface layout editor. AppBuilder appreciably simplifies your application programming effort by:

Supporting drag-and-drop layout of interface elements.
Creating the object description and initialization code on your behalf.
Helping you create and manage the integrating code.

This chapter briefly introduces some important concepts, and describes AppBuilder and its place in the Progress 4GL application programmer’s toolkit:

OpenEdge Application Development Model
Concepts and terminology
What is smart about SmartObjects?
Visible versus nonvisible objects
Widgets
Reading and writing 4GL widgets
Inter-object communication: signatures
Anatomy of a database application
Working with AppBuilder
Single-window or multi-window design?
Designing for character-based environments
Building an application in AppBuilder