It's RAD, dude

While Web-based applications solved the problem of how to get applications to users and centrally maintain them, they presented new technical challenges for the rapid application development tools needed to build and deploy them.Often, applications had to be totally rewritten with another technology, such as Java or C, before they could be put to high-volume use ? and that was anything but rapid.Fortunately, a new class of RAD tools is making Web development easier and giving developers real enterprise-strength results. The main differences among the latest generation of RAD tools is how much of the programming code that forms an application they hide, and what form the applications take when they're deployed.Although simplified products can make a wider range of people productive as "developers," there's often a trade-off in terms of how far the applications they create can be customized and where they can be run.Tenfold Corp. has tried to minimize that trade-off. The company's EnterpriseTenfold tool can produce in two weeks applications that might take a year in other environments.Tenfold's approach might not fit the architectural standards of some organizations, however, as it's based on a proprietary run time.But tools such as Macromedia Inc.'s ColdFusion and Novell Inc.'s Extend let people with general IT skills create browser-based applications and even Web services, and deploy them on Java 2 Enterprise Edition application server ? without ever having to write a line of Java code.For example, Novell's Extend product ? acquired by the company when it purchased Java application vendor SilverStream Software Inc. two years ago ? lets users visually connect data to create back-end services from existing applications and data sources. That even includes mainframe terminal applications. The services can then be wired with a visual tool into a portlet ? a Web application within a Web site ? or used to integrate the data source with other applications.There's a way for organizations with existing development expertise to leverage the RAD approach as well. ColdFusion allows the mixing of Java with its tag-based application description language, as does Extend. And organizations with developers who know (or want to learn) high-level programming and scripting languages can also turn to visual development tools from companies such as Oracle Corp.