Release 10.1A: OpenEdge Development:
AppBuilder

OpenEdge Application Development Model

AppBuilder is part of the Application Development Model (ADM) architecture.

Today’s desktop computers offer more raw power than even supercomputers did thirty years ago. Programmers are now routinely being tasked to produce applications that were once hardly imaginable, and they are falling behind. The demand for new software overwhelms the capacity of programmers to create it using traditional methodologies.

The ADM addresses this issue by emphasizing object-oriented reusability.

The ADM supports the creation of large-scale, reusable application building blocks that are able to communicate with one another in well-defined ways. Once the blocks have been created, application programmers can assemble them into new applications in a fraction of the time it would require to create the applications from scratch. This is the principle of the run-time library: avoid having to repeat the same or a similar development effort each time. Spend the time and energy only once. Create sophisticated general-purpose modules, and then reuse them over and over again.

The ADM architecture has four basic components:

A hierarchical set of object classes from which to develop reusable components.
A defined methodology for inter-object communication.
A way to set object properties using public data.
“Super procedures,” analogous to dynamically linked libraries, that implement object behaviors.

For detailed information about the Application Development Model, see OpenEdge Development: ADM and SmartObjects . The related API reference is OpenEdge Development: ADM Reference .