Book Image

Rapid Application Development with OutSystems

By : Ricardo Pereira
Book Image

Rapid Application Development with OutSystems

By: Ricardo Pereira

Overview of this book

OutSystems is a software development platform that speeds up the build phase by abstracting code and making almost everything visual. This means replacing textual language with visual artifacts that avoid lexical errors and speed up code composition using accelerators and predefined templates. The book begins by walking you through the fundamentals of the technology, along with a general overview of end-to-end web and mobile software development. You'll learn how to configure your personal area in the cloud and use the OutSystems IDE to connect with it. The book then shows you how to build a web application based on the best architectural and developmental practices in the market, and takes the same approach for the mobile paradigm. As you advance, you'll find out how to develop the same application, and the great potential of reusing code from one paradigm in another and the symbiosis between them is showcased.The only application that'll differ from the application in the exercise is the one used in business process technology (BPT), with a focus on a common market use case. By the end of this OutSystems book, you'll be able to develop enterprise-level applications on the web and mobile, integrating them with third parties and other systems on the market. You'll also understand the concepts of performance, security, and software construction and be able to apply them effectively.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
1
Section 1: OutSystems 101
5
Section 2: The Magical Path of the Backend
10
Section 3: Create Value and Innovate with the Frontend
16
Section 4: Extensibility and Complexity of the OutSystems Platform

BPTs versus Timers

Although both BPTs (both light and traditional) and Timers are asynchronous tools, their purposes are not that similar.

Factors such as parallelism and competition differ between the types of Processes.

By default, there are 20 threads per frontend to run Light BPT Processes, 10 threads for traditional BPT Processes, and 3 threads for Timers.

Furthermore, BPT Processes are driven by database events, while Timers are triggered by a programmed schedule (they can also be triggered in the application code with Wake, but a Timer is not an event focused on a database event).

Also, while the Timer makes three attempts to run successfully, BPTs try until they succeed or until someone cancels them in Service Center.

All these factors have to be considered when deciding on the ideal tool to use; that is, in practical terms:

  • Timers are recommended for massive or time-consuming processing of data that is not oriented towards a specific database event but...