Iron Speed Designer Helps Developers Go From Nothing to Full Web Application in Five Minutes

fact sheet Vendor: Iron Speed, Inc. (www.ironspeed.com) Vendor's Information: About Iron Speed Designer About Iron Speed, Inc. vendor resources Try Iron Speed Designer Today! Iron Speed Designer eliminates routine infrastructure programming, freeing you to focus on your business logic. Easily Customize Generated Applications 5-Minute Video Demonstration Build Feature-complete Web Applications in Minutes Case Studies: Shave Months from Your Development Projects Whitepaper: Build Web 2.0 Applications Without Hand-Coding

As long as there has been software, developers have been writing code—usually one line at a time. Developers move from writing one application to the next, but a lot of the code—especially with data-driven applications—is either the same or highly similar. Writing and debugging this "infrastructure" code (data access, SQL queries, user interface, etc.) takes time away from what many developers need to focus on today—the actual business logic necessary to get the job done. Building custom applications that implement a business's unique processes is not suited to the line-by-line approach, especially if the business wants to stay competitive. Developers need power tools to help them speed through the routine infrastructure part of application development.

Write 10,000 Lines of Code in 10 Minutes! Generate database and reporting applications for .NET in minutes. Quickly create visually stunning, feature-rich Web 2.0 applications that are easy-to-customize and ready-to-deploy. Iron Speed Designer eliminates routine infrastructure programming, freeing you to focus on your business logic. Simply point to an existing database and let the Iron Speed Designer wizards build a sophisticated, database-driven application that's ready to deploy. Download the trial now!

That's where Iron Speed Designer comes in.

Iron Speed Designer is a RAD (rapid application development) code generation tool that reduces the time it takes to develop a custom data-driven Web application by an "order of magnitude" says Alan S. Fisher, Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board for Iron Speed, Inc. "About 90 percent of all applications in corporate America are data-driven apps, and we can significantly reduce the time it takes developers to produce those apps." Professional software developers, database administrators, or even those who are comfortable writing scripts or basic logic can utilize Iron Speed Designer to generate applications that fetch, display, collect, modify and update data in a database without any programming.

Many companies' custom applications start out as either an Excel spreadsheet or an Access database. As these apps become mission-critical, migrating them to a wider audience over a geographically-dispersed area requires a web-based solution. This is an area in which Iron Speed Designer excels. "If the data is in a database and the developer understands the database structure, schema relationships and database views, the developer can simply point Iron Speed Designer at the database and quickly create the initial application and be ready for code customizations," Fisher says.

While most of Iron Speed Designer's current customers are professional .NET software developers focused on solving business process issues, many people new to the .NET platform find Iron Speed Designer useful in furthering their understanding of .NET programming. Fisher adds that, "Because we're generating an n-tier application that is structured along .NET best programming practices, many of Iron Speed Designer's users find it helpful to their learning process. And since the application is well defined structurally, it also means anyone on the development team who knows Iron Speed Designer can easily maintain an application they didn't write, thus lowering maintenance costs."

Getting Started With Iron Speed Designer
If you already have an existing database, getting started with Iron Speed Designer is straightforward. In some instances you may want to enhance your database before you start by adding a few fields or tables to support your new application. However in most cases you'll use Iron Speed Designer on your existing database.

First, make sure primary key and foreign key relationships are defined between the tables and that similar relationships are properly declared in the database. Iron Speed Designer relies heavily upon these relationships to build your application.

Next, point the application wizard in Iron Speed Designer at the database(s) and select the tables and database views you want to use. Step through the application wizard by picking the visual style (Page Style) you want, which .NET platform you want to target your application at (2.0, 3.0, etc.), and whether you need a multi-lingual application (Iron Speed Designer supports multiple languages). After you select these things, click "Finish".

Iron Speed Designer will analyze your database and generate a fully working n-tier application with a set of web pages for data entry and data display for each table and view you selected. It generates the data access layer and all necessary SQL queries so the application runs correctly. The resulting application allows you to add, edit and view data from the designated database. This whole process usually takes less than five minutes.

Once the initial app is built, you can customize it. The first thing you'll probably want to change is the layout of various pages. You might want to rearrange data entry form fields or the way reports look. Iron Speed Designer's built-in web page layout editors allows you to drag-and-drop and remove fields on a page. You can also add and subtract filters on a table view page. Iron Speed Designer generates all the filter code necessary to do this automatically. Once you've made your changes, all you need to do is hit the Run button to regenerate the code with your changes applied.

Making End Users Happy
Fisher says one common problem isn't with Iron Speed Designer or the applications it generates, but rather that the developer's database doesn't have the structure necessary to generate the application their employer is looking for. "Many times, application end-users can't tell you exactly what they want until they see a working app" he says. "On the other hand, they can always tell you what they don't want. This problem happens regardless of whether you build applications line-by-line or with Iron Speed Designer." Iron Speed Designer has an advantage over hand-coded applications in that you can rapidly prototype an application, show it to users for feedback, and then easily change the application to suit the end user.

If you need to enhance your database to accommodate your user's requirements, you can do that with one of the many standard database tools on the market. Iron Speed Designer is not a database design or schema layout tool. But once the database is updated, all you do is tell Iron Speed Designer to synchronize with the database and it will update your application. Once changes are incorporated, just make any necessary tweaks, and you're all set. The tweaks can be made either in Iron Speed Designer or Visual Studio, depending upon how much custom business logic needs to be added.

Deployment, Updates and Security
When you are ready to deploy your application, Iron Speed Designer can generate an MSI deployment installer to button-up the application into one file that can be easily installed where ever you want. Updating the application simply involves repeating the process, and Designer updates those modules that have changed. Iron Speed Designer's application security wizard generates several different types of application security mechanisms, such as Active Directory, Microsoft Authorization Manager or database-level security. None of these eliminate the need for appropriate database security, such as role and user information security.

Summary
Developers need advanced tools to rapidly build the applications businesses demand today. Tools that generate your basic infrastructure code enable you to create your business logic more quickly and satisfy your user's demands. Iron Speed Designer is an all-in-one solution. You can quickly get past the infrastructure and focus your attention on what matters most—your users.