Guidelines for Building Applications


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The Software Development Lifecycle: An Overview

Application development typically occurs in four phases:
n Design. The initial specification for the application is developed. This specification can
be based on a variety of sources: customer feedback, input of project management or
development team members, requests for enhancement, necessary bug fixes, or systems
analysis.
n Develop. Individual modules are created or modified, possibly incorporating a wide
variety of languages, tools, or platforms.
n Test. The modules are tested. This generally occurs in two stages: unit test and system
test. Unit test is testing at a modular or functional level; for example, testing UI
elements such as menus or buttons. System test tests the integration of major portions of
the code; the backend with the UI, for example.
n Deploy. The modules are packaged together in an installable form and delivered to
customers.

Using Project Builder to implement a management strategy

In any development project, management tasks can be split roughly into two categories:
n Project management, which includes allocating the necessary equipment, budget, and
person-hours of work necessary to complete the development of the application.
n Software configuration management, which includes assigning modules to developers,
determining dependencies among modules, maintaining the code under development,
and version control.
Project Builder, a component of both Forms Developer and Reports Developer, enables you
to simplify your software configuration management tasks so you and your team can focus
on your primary objectives: designing, coding, and testing applications.

About Project Builder

To help simplify your software management tasks, Project Builder provides the means for
you to:
n Associate modules with an application or component of an application.
n Automate actions based on file types.
n Create dependencies between modules and indicate how changes cascade; in other
words, show which modules need to be recompiled based on changes to other modules.
n Assign default connection strings to modules.
n Designate which modules are to be included in the final install set.
n Share projects and subprojects among team members and port them to different
environments.
n Invoke other tools from the Project Builder user interface.
These features are described in detail in Section 1.1.3, "Exploring Project Builder benefits".
If you’re unfamiliar with Project Builder terminology, however, it’s a good idea to read
through Section 1.1.2.1, "Understanding Project Builder terminology" before proceeding.
This section defines some basic terms which provide the context for a discussion of Project
Builder’s features.