Have you ever listed the features that you require from your ideal application development tool?

Here are our suggestions.

Mandatory Features

The application development process or tool must be able to -

1. Create robust, secure, flexible information systems that meet users' needs, in reasonable time and cost scales, without risk of budget or time overruns and without risk of failure.
2. Allow development of applications incrementally, without an up-front detailed specification or design (i.e. no normalisation).
3. Change and enhance these systems as the real world of the users evolves, as the business expands, contracts or changes direction and to accommodate new technology and the changing marketplace of the business (i.e. maintenance is no longer a serious problem).
4. Allow developers to create application packages that can be modified to accommodate the requirements of different users without the need to create a new version of the original package and without affecting that.
5. Allow multiple developers to work on creating the same application, without problem, even when they don't communicate adequately.
6. Ensure that all applications are totally integrated, sharing the same single corporate database, without any data redundancy, even if developers don't communicate at all.
7. Achieve very rapid response times, which do not noticeably degrade as data volumes grow.
8. System development should be totally self-documenting to ensure that standards are adhered to. It must be possible to know who changed what and when, and it must be possible to roll back all changes if disaster occurs.

   Nice to Have Feature

9. Whilst the above points are required for an Application Development tool that runs on the IBM i and supports the IBM i only, the ideal solution should be database and server independent and able to integrate with legacy data on other platforms, such as SQL SERVER, MYSQL and DB2.

   There are no compiled ERROS applications and the concept of compiled applications has gone.