Summary of

United States Patent Application Publication

Pub. No.: US 2008/0201687 A1

Pallav Nandi chaudhuri

ABSTRACT
This treatise summarizes the pros and cons of the invention of a new application builder system that
provides a comprehensive facility to application developers. The new environment is equipped with the
facility of interactive development of application at the developers end as well as an optimal debugging
facility which makes it worth than some of its previous application development environments.

1 INTRODUCTION
Interactive application development environments are designed to maximize the application
developers’ productivity. In an interactive environment the application developer is allowed to create
complex application by drag and drop of visual block of the program segments where the source code is
generated at the back end. This source code can then be compiled and run. The source code can also be
used for debugging also in an optimal way in the present invention than its ancestors which are
constrained with certain limitations which will be cleared in the background part. The different
characteristics of the present invention will be depicted in the consecutive sections.

2 BACKGROUNDS
The invented application development system differs from its previous counterparts with an added
enhancement called ‘debug level’. The study of the previously inventions of the same is important to
clearly understand the functionality of application development systems.

It is mentioned before that the application development systems can be used to develop applications
interactively. Source code is generated at the back end which can be used to compile and run the
program. However, from debugger’s point of view the situation is not easy enough as the debugger has
to work at source code level. The generated source code is not optimal for debugging purpose.

At the source code level there are certain known procedures available which can be used to typing
down the debugging module at the time of composition. But at interactive level these procedures are
not known. In certain application builders capable of object oriented design, code generation for specific
object is known. However, logically classifying the object for which the code is not generated and
switching between the two classes of objects is not known. Here two classes are the objects for which
the source code should be generated and the other class is for which the code should not be generated.
 In previous application builders, addition of debugging module is possible. But this however sometimes
results into the implementation of some nontrivial situations which increases the complexity of the
source code.

These limitations of the previously invented application builders justifies that the present invention is
indeed an optimal one in comparison to them providing some facilities to overcome the limitations.

3 TECHNIQUES INVOLVED
With the tools present in the invented application builder, the user can develop applications
interactively by adding different components interactively as well as can generate code for testing and
debugging. This has the capability of addition or removal of components interactively. The properties
can be set interactively. A new property as mentioned before is introduced called ‘debug level’.
Feasibility is provided in setting up the parameters for different properties interactively. E.g. for the
newly introduced property called ‘debug level’, if it is set to debug it will work in the ‘debug’ mode only
and on the other hand if it is set to ‘final’ then it will work in debug level and as well as it will produce
the final version of the application which can be run both by the developer and the end user. The
detailed description of the different properties of application builder is as follows-

3.1 Visual Development Environment

The present application builder installed in a computer system can be used by an application developer
well versed in running application development software. The present invention provides the facility of
drag and drop of components and generation of source code like its previous counter parts. So a user
acquainted with different visual development tools can use this easily. The application builder is
equipped with an editor for creating or updating application components. Each application component
has a certain number of properties which can be set interactively.

3.2 Testing and Debugging Framework

The most important aspect of the present invention is the addition of a new property called ‘debug-
level’. This extends the scope for the application developer to create applications in two modes such
that the application can be prepared for debugging purpose only and both debugging and running also.
The application produced by the latter situation can be run on any target computer. The application
objects included for debugging purpose can be highlighted in colours and can be omitted from the final
application to be executed in the target computer.

3.3 Development Methodology

The application developer will create a new application by creating a new project in the invented
application development environment. He can use the editor or other GUI component to edit the
application. He can add and remove components interactively as well as edit the different properties
including the newly invented ‘debug-level’ by setting parameter values for those. Then using the code-
generator the final application can be prepared. As it is mentioned before the produced application may
be the final application or the application for debug purpose only.

The GUI builder component can be used to create GUI objects such as text box, button etc as well as
debugging components also. There will be color difference for the debugging components for ease of
use. Similarly flow charts can be generated in which there will be differences in the representation of
final components and debugging components so that the developer can easily differentiate between
two types of components. In general terms it can be said that in debugging mode the facility is provided
for the developer to dump data for his reference which he can easily omit in the executable version
prepared for the end user.

At any time the developer can update his previously created application to create a newer version of
the same.

3.4 Testing Suite

The present invention can be used for testing purpose also by creating a suite of test. This is achieved
by doing a subtle change in the development methodology as described in the [0032] of the patent
application publication no. US 2008/0201687 A1.

4 CONCLUSIONS
From the discussion in the whole treatise it can fairly be concluded that

1. The present invention is application builder software incorporated with some previously known
and some exciting new features.
2. The software is equipped with a new feature which is not known before called debug level. This
can be used to develop application for final use. At the same time it can be used to incorporate
debugging components also.
3. Code generation component is there to create debug level implementation and final
implementation by setting up parameters for different properties including ‘debug level’.
4. GUI builder tool can be used for visual differentiation of debug level components and final
components.
5. Updating an application is possible from a high level implementation of an application.

The exciting new inventions present in the software justify its claims made for patenting it.