Development without Programming

Print this Page	3.2 Transition 02. Development without Programming	Close this Page

3.2.01. Application Development without Programming: (1979)

1. After the design and development of many new programming languages, a natural evolution took place to what became known as Fourth Generation Languages (4GL), Very High Level Languages (VHLL) and Unified Modelling Language (UML).

2. The most significant improvement was the evolution from procedural to non-procedural languages where non-procedural languages can be represented as a tabular specification of requirements.

3. What this means is that programming has been replaced by fill-in-the-blanks forms - the same forms that data entry people use every day for application purposes.

2. Intellectual Property Rights:

1. Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) include: (1) Copyright, (2) Patents and (3) Trademarks.

2. Patents and Trademarks are not normally involved in Internet Application Services so IPR is confined to copyright and author rights.

3. Author rights are very easy to understand: the person who creates any information is the copyright owner of that information without any further registration.

4. Where an employee is paid to create information by a company, then the company own the copyright to the information created by that employee.

5. An author has the right to be identified as the original author of any information - normally the authors name and date is adequate identification.

3. Ownership:

1. Each customer has copyright ownership rights to:

(1) All data entered and changed is owned by the author or company that authored that information.

(2) All web page specification data is owned by the author or company that authored (or designed) that business requirement information.

2. Each customer may share reference data as:

(1) Licensed data such as postcode address data that is owned by Royal Mail.

(2) Common web page specification data such as support requests that is reused by many hundreds of customers and is licensed.

4. Internet Application Service (IAS):

1. Bespoke Internet applications are delivered without any bespoke programming, but may employ many hundreds of bespoke specification forms.

2. The development procedure is to fill in some forms and the maintenance procedure is to change field values in these forms with extreme levels of flexibility.

3. It has taken many decades of continual relentless improvement to refine this architecture and methodology - something that competitors cannot begin to emulate. A unique characteristic is zero-defect applications as the normal programming defects have been eliminated - however business specifications may still be incomplete.

4. Each data object may be supported with a set of functions that each has own unique form for: (1) Dashboard, (2) Popup Guide, (3) Search, (4) List selection, (5) Add, (6) Clone, (7) Change, (8) Sheet, (9) History and (10) management information.

5. Professionally Developed Operational Services (PDOS):

1. A bunch of forms are used to specify bespoke application requirements.

2. A web page layout is specified by filling in a form - that data is owned by its author or the company that paid the author.

3. The author and/or company have copyright to that web page and have the right to access and copy that web page data.

4. Data entered by one company (or branch) cannot be accessed by any other company (or branch).

6. Operations:

1. Internet Applications (in the cloud) use secure professional data centers to host racks of environmentally effective servers that are connected to the very fast Internet backbone.

2. A cluster of machines may be used to deliver: three web servers with a traffic balancing firewall connected to a pair of application servers that are then connected to an encrypted database server. The core three-tier architecture is mandated to ensure that the application and database servers are NOT connected to the Internet and are isolated from most hacking attempts. See Microsoft Three-Tier Architecture for more details.

3. In addition, a mail server, file transfer server and intrusion detection server are employed - each physical machine has one and only one function. Each server has no other software (or data) installed, nothing that would provide a hacker with a point of vulnerability. No server has Office, Adobe or any other software installed that will introduce a weak point.

4. No physical contact with any server is needed - servers can be rebooted using remote facilities. Servers do not have tape readers, DVD writers or any physical method of data transfer.

7. Licensed Services:

1. The professional data centers are owned by substantial computer companies that physically limit who is entitled to visit the site.

2. Each server is owned by its manufacturer who are contracted to replace any defective component within four hours.

3 .Each server has licensed operating system and applicable system software that is applicable to the role it has to play. System software is keep up to date by testing each patch on an identical set of hardware in another physical location.

4. The architecture of licensed system software is a mixture of proprietary and open source that is all subject to non-transferable licenses. Where IBM DB2 Database Management System is used to store data, the author of the data is the copyright owner of that data and the DB2 software is owned by IBM.

8. ISO/IEC 13238-3 IRDS Export Import: (1997)

1. Information Resource Dictionary System (IRDS) as ISO 10027 is at the heart of all bespoke application services as the core business requirements and business rules.

2. "Import" is about transforming low-level code and specifications into high level declarative language constructs.

3. "Export" is about generating a fully working application service from this dictionary of business requirements.

4. IRDS used Abstract Syntax Notation /1 (ASN/1) as it definition languages - this was a precursor to XML as a mark-up language. The role of the JCT editor was to coordinate input and critique from all parts of the world.