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

External tools, components, and support

As expected, OutSystems offers an extremely attractive help and support ecosystem so that we can leverage our developments and unlock various doubts or problems: the OutSystems Community

In addition, there is a repository of components and plug-ins already built that we can download for free, and that allows us to take even more advantage of our OutSystems software factories: OutSystems Forge.

Forge and Community

Forge is a repository of pre-built components and plugins developed by OutSystems and several developers around the world. OutSystems applications are directly supported by the teams that developed them, making the process of using and optimizing them much easier. With this, we can avoid building something we need from scratch, instead reusing something someone has already done, thereby saving time and effort.

The following screenshot shows the look and feel of Forge:

Figure 1.17 – OutSystems Forge main page

Figure 1.17 – OutSystems Forge main page

The Community is a space for developers (and not just that; it extends to several roles within this huge universe) to share their doubts, help solve problems, and provide feedback and ideas, regardless of the degree of experience of each one.

The following screenshot shows the look and feel of Forums in the Community:

Figure 1.18 – OutSystems Forums (from Community) main page

Figure 1.18 – OutSystems Forums (from Community) main page

Community is very useful and always growing and evolving. Therefore, we can always rely on the fact that the OutSystems world is not static but dynamic, simple, fast, and efficient, just like the product available to us.