RAD Platform for Engineering Software Development

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Objective

The field research division of one the BCS-IT clients used to process experimental data with a set of standalone applications (built with Fortran and C) implementing mathematical algorithms. Any new algorithm required a new application to be developed from scratch, that finally resulted in the number of single-type standalone applications. That led to the following issues:

• excessive cost of new application development and modification of the existing ones, 
• unfounded efforts for the applications maintenance,
• insufficient employees productivity followed from using the old UI technologies.

Trying to streamline the processes of engineering application development, the Client requested that BCS-IT develop a rapid application development (RAD) framework that allows:

• unification of the processes of engineering applications development and legacy calculational algorithms/modules use;
• building user-friendly GUI for scientific/engineering applications through cutting edge software development technologies;
• a convenient way to quickly develop and modify applications (in cases which users need to add new input data, change output data format, modify calculational algorithms, etc.).

Approach

To meet the RAD framework requirements BCS-IT suggested the software to work as described below:

Configurator is used for editing application metadata that defines:

• input and output data types;
• the DB structure;
• UI (tables and charts) for results visualization;
• legacy codes/ procedures to be used.

The framework core then uses application metadata to generate:

• UI (XAML),
• the DB structure (the dataset),
• and source code of the application.

Client’s engineers are also provided with possibilities:

• to add a bespoke layout: the UI generator provides a number of predefined UI layouts for input/output interfaces; when a bespoke layout is needed, the engineer amends XAML files;
• to implement a specific business logic: when the application needs a specific business logic to be implemented the engineer amends the C#.NET source code.

As the final step the engineer compiles generated source code and gets ready to use standalone application.

Legacy modules are added to the application as DLL or EXE files.

Results Client Received

RAD platform developed by BCS-IT team is a highly effective tool, because:

• the cost of engineering application development, modification, and testing has been reduced through the use of the RAD platform – now engineers only need to reconfigure the application using the framework and recompile it again to create a new version;
• the functional use of engineering applications has been increased – now engineering applications are created by domain specialists with little knowledge of programming, therefore allowing the most effective approach to visualize results;
• the quality of engineering applications has been improved through the use of the most sophisticated software development technologies providing use friendly input/output GUI.

Project Information

• Technologies: .NET Framework 2.0 and 3.0, Developer Express Components, Interoperability, DataSet, Serialization, MS SQL 2005
• Project duration: 1 year
• Project team: project manager, architect, developer, test designer, tester

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