The Rapide runtime provides powerful cross platform capabilities, freeing the developer to concentrate on the business requirements.
Rapide implements the user interface and dialog management aspects of the application using a combination of a generated window manager definition file and a powerful runtime.
The window manager definition file contains the specification of the user interface and dialog flows in an XML based format. This is then loaded at application startup by the Rapide runtime and used to perform all window management and dialog flows.
A key advantage of this approach is that new releases, enhancements and fixes for Rapide can be implemented with a new version of the runtime without requiring regeneration of the window manager definition file.
The Rapide runtime is developed in Java as a portable, cross platform implementation that supports desktop and browser applications. This provides consistency in behaviour for the application across all platforms.
In addition to the Rapide runtime, the application also requires the Gen communications runtime for server flows and the action diagram runtime for action diagram functions. However the Rapide runtime replaces the Gen runtimes that support the user interface.
The diagram below illustrates the structure of a Rapide generated browser application and the various components that are included in the assembled application.
- On a browser the Rapide runtime is a JavaScript library that is downloaded once and then cached on the browser. This happens automatically when the browser connects to the Rapide application on the application server.
- At the middle level is the application server that hosts the Rapide generated application. This is typically deployed as a WAR file into a standard JEE application server like WebSphere, WebLogic or JBoss. For testing purposes the application can also be executed using the built in Rapide OSGi server without the need for deployment to an application server.
The components of the WAR file are:
- The Rapide runtime
- Generated action block classes
- Rapide generated Java and XML files
- Gen action block and communications runtime
The bottom level represents the servers that can be accessed from the Rapide clients. These include any standard Gen server or a web service (with Gen 8.5 IE1 and Java support).