Rapid Application Development

The world economy is moving at a breakneck pace. To keep up with that pace, organizations that wish to remain competitive must adopt new, innovative methods of meeting the increasing demands of consumers for more, better, and faster. The answer to those demands in the software industry is Rapid Application Development (RAD). Rapid Application Development is exactly that. It is the process through which the development cycle of an application is expedited. RAD uses automated tools to replace hand-design and coding processes with automated design and coding, which creates a more stable and efficient development cycle that is faster and less error prone. As a result, RAD not only produces products quicker, but it also saves invaluable resources, namely time and money.

Totem brings Rapid Application Development, and all of its advantages, to COBOL users. Totem thus reaps all of the benefits of the simple, straightforward programming style of COBOL, while at the same time, implementing RAD concepts. Totem is the automated tool for COBOL users looking to employ RAD concepts. Totem shortens the design cycle of applications by converting the design into executable code as quickly as possible. In addition to providing automatic access to all data controls, Totem automatically generates almost all of the code required to build an application, and it writes that code in COBOL. Through Totem's various features, you may utilize drag-and-drop functions or diagrams to clearly organize and design your applications, while the actual writing of coded text is kept to a minimum. The tight integration of the analysis and design tools with the code generator allows much higher productivity than would be possible if the tools were not coupled. In this manner, Totem does not sacrifice quality in its implementation of Rapid Application Development.

Totem breaks out of the boundaries of traditional COBOL software tools. It is far from traditional, as it allows COBOL programmers to generate higher quality applications for a fraction of the cost and in a fraction of the time it would take to develop the same applications using traditional methods.

For more information about Rapid Application Development and the role that Totem can play in making your organization RAD, please download our About RAD White Paper.