Stepping up to LANSA Version 11
Step 5 - Start to use a component-based approach to development
| When: | Optional - At your leisure (you must complete steps 1 and 2 first). |
| Benefits gained: | |
| The most important things about this step that managers or planners need to know: | |
| The most important things about this step that application developers need to know: |
Better and more productive application designs.
Because Visual LANSA is based on component technology and a repository-based approach, you can reuse every part of an application. You can store groups of fields, menus, pictures, and other parts of an application with the associated code in the LANSA repository and reuse them. The reuse of these standard elements in all applications ensures rapid development, consistency and ease of maintenance.
All roads lead to components.
By starting to use a component-based approach to application development, you can create applications with powerful graphical user interfaces (GUI). With components you create event-driven applications using an advanced visual designer together with an easy-to-use code editor. You can accomplish most development tasks graphically.
The language you use in creating Visual LANSA components is the familiar RDML (including the new syntax features enabled by RDMLX in LANSA V11) with a few new extensions required for event-driven programming. The event-driven programming method provides the foundation for easy-to-use applications which put the user in control. However, new commands have been kept to a minimum to ensure that you can use a single set of skills for Windows, iSeries and Web application development.
As you proceed with component-based development, you will find that you can go beyond visual components. Using the component support in LANSA V11 you can build non-visual components that can further abstract business objects and rules from the user interface, leading to a better application architecture that will better adapt to changing circumstances and requirements.
It is very likely that components will become even more significant in software development in the future. Emerging industry trends such as Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and its Web Services manifestation are, in practice, founded on a premise of a component-based development approach. In future versions, LANSA's support for component-based application development is likely to be extended and enhanced.
Refer to the Creating Applications Using Components chapter in the Visual LANSA Developer Guide for more information about developing components in LANSA.
Becoming a component-based application developer means you have to learn some new concepts.
Developers used to creating procedural 5250 or Web browser applications (in LANSA or otherwise) will have some new concepts to grasp. This includes understanding concepts such as instances, properties, events and methods, inheritance and more.
Here are some of the strategies that are available to help you approach this:
- Ask your LANSA account manager about suitable classroom training. Find out more about LANSA Education.
- Read the Creating Applications Using Components chapter in the Visual LANSA Developer Guide.
- The Visual LANSA Framework provides an application framework for designers and developers that helps throughout the full cycle of application development. Using the Visual LANSA Framework, you can develop either or both of rich-client Windows or Web browser-based implementations of your application design. Coding assistants generate much of the code for you and this is one of the reasons that the Visual LANSA Framework is such a good way to get started with component-based development.
