Demo
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Rapide
Controls Demo. This web site hosts a sample Rapide application that shows various features of Rapide. |
Please let us know about your experience with the demo since we appreciate your feedback.
You can also view recordings of our series of Web Seminars on Rapide at the IET Support Centre.
Frequently Asked Questions
Development
| I want to quickly convert an existing GUI or Web Client application to using Rapide. Do I need to re-design all of my client windows and procedure steps? | Your existing procedure step designs (action diagram, dialog flows and window designs) are used by Rapide and will work unchanged. You will then be able to take advantage of the Rapide runtime without changes to the models. There are a few minor unsupported features and we have a plug-in to identify unsupported code as well as an assessment service to help identify how easily your models can start to use Rapide. Once you have started to use Rapide, you can then use the Rapide Designer to enhance your models to take advantage of advanced UI capabilities, but only for those client windows that need to be enhanced. |
| How can I convert a block mode screen application? | You can use the Rapide Block Mode option to generate a web application directly from the screen designs in the Gen model or they can be automatically transformed into Window designs with optional support for converting into separate client and server procedure steps. |
| What versions of Gen are supported? | Rapide requires Gen 8.0 or higher. |
| Will Rapide clients work with my existing server code, and if so, on what platforms and comms protocols? | Yes, Rapide uses standard Gen client/server middleware to communicate to all types of Gen servers and using all protocols supported by the Gen Java runtimes. |
| Can I develop external action blocks in Rapide? | Yes, the action diagram code for the clients is developed using Gen and generated using the standard Gen Java generators. EABs are supported and can either be developed in Java or in C (using the Rapide EAB Proxy). |
| Can I access standard Java libraries without using external action blocks? | Yes, with Rapide Extension Libraries. We have implemented libraries for PDF, JasperReports and bar-code creation and additional libraries can be implemented on demand. |
| Can I implement web service calls from Rapide? | Yes, either using an EAB or using the Web Services Consumption feature introduced in Gen 8.5 IR2. |
| What Gen generation targets do I need a licence for? | Rapide utilises the Gen Java generators for the action diagram code, therefore you will need a licence for Java generation. Note that you do not need to generate the window managers for Web or WebView generation - just the action block code. |
| Can I generate and install the application from the Gen toolset? | Yes, a Rapide generator plug-in is available to support generation and installation from the toolset. |
| Can I generate and install the application using GuardIEn on the CSE ? | Yes, Rapide generation is supported using GuardIEn on the CSE. |
| I have implemented customisations in the Gen user exits for client/server flows. Will these be supported? | Rapide uses the standard Gen runtime for flows from the client to server and therefore your existing user exit customisations will still work with Rapide. |
| Can I use BLOBs to place pictures on the window? | Yes, with Rapide you can place images contained in a BLOB view onto the window as either a single image or into a listbox row. Supported formats are BMP, JPG, GIF and PNG. |
| Are OCX Controls supported? | OCX controls are supported for a windows desktop application, but because they are not available on all platforms, we recommend that they are not used. Instead the functionality of OCX controls can be replaced by a combination of Rapide controls (enhanced listboxes, tree controls, grids, tabbed frames, etc.) or Java / JavaScript controls. This will then provide a true cross-platform capability. IET have various approaches to assist in the conversion of existing OCX usage, so please discuss your specific requirements with us. |
| Can we implement a browser application with a standard header and footer? | Rapide has a very powerful new concept called Frames that allows p-step windows to be embedded within other windows. Therefore the top level p-step could specify the overall header, footer and then the individual windows would be loaded into a frame within this. The concept of frames is very useful when converting a GUI application to browser because it allows you to host child windows within frames rather than as separate pop-up dialogs or full screen pages, which makes the use of a complex multi-windowed application much more intuitive for a browser application. |
| Can we use CSS theming to define the look and feel of the application? | Yes, Rapide uses CSS theming for browser applications to allow fine control over the windows and widgets, for application defaults and overrides for subclasses of controls. |
| I want to convert a GUI application that uses a lot of dot notation functions to manipulate GUI controls. Is this supported, and what is the performance implication for a browser application? | A key objective of Rapide is to enable the fast conversion of existing GUI applications to browser with a minimum of change to the existing models. Therefore the majority of existing Gen GUI dot notation functions are supported by Rapide. Dot notation statements that control GUI objects involve a round-trip to the client device and hence can be slower on a browser compared to a windows desktop application. To improve the performance, Rapide enables events to use an optimisation feature to issue the statements in a single batch rather than run them serially and hence significantly improve the performance of heavy manipulation of controls using action diagram statements. |
| How does Rapide help to build UIs for different platforms that meets the specific user behaviors on these platforms? GUIs for Windows or Browsers often have a lot of information on their screens. Apps for Tablets and Phones typically have fewer fields per screen and less informative text. Can different GUI designs share same Gen client code? | With Rapide you can provide multiple UI designs for a single p-step
for different form factors and device types to cater for different
screen sizes and also design standards. You have control over this using different dialect designs
for the same p-step. By default we recommend the following:
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Browser
| What browsers are supported? | Most browsers are supported, for example Internet Explorer, Edge, Chrome,
Firefox, Opera, Android or Safari.
The key requirement is Javascript
support. No browser plugins are required. |
Application Server
| What application servers are supported? | Any JEE compliant application server is supported. Deployment can either be performed using traditional war files or as OSGi bundles. |
| Is load balancing supported on the app server? | Load balancing to distribute workload across multiple nodes is supported. When setting up a load balancer, it must be configured to use session affinity so that once a session is started, the same server serves all subsequent requests for that session. |
Desktop
| What desktop platforms are supported? | Windows |
| What third party requirements are there for desktop installation? | A Java Virtual Machine (JVM) must be installed on the machine or as part of installing the application. Rapide does not require the separate installation of any other third party runtimes, since all of the required runtime software is provided with the Rapide runtime. |
| How easy is it to update the application? | Once the application has been deployed to the desktop machine, the software can be easily and automatically updated by refreshing the .jar files or serving them over the network. Updates do not require any reboots. |