Software Development on a Leash

'Software Development on a Leash' is designed as a roadmap for experienced developers and architects to align their approaches and development priorities for high reuse and innovation. Author David Birmingham's products have been successfully deployed in a variety of venues, in this context, highly complex desktop environments with rapid turnaround and high-intensity delivery deadlines. This book contrasts the application-centric development approach from the architecture-centric development approach, introducing the concept of the metamorphic super-pattern. Metamorphism is the capability of a software program to dynamically adapt to changing application requirements without rebuilding the binary executable. Birmhingham invites the reader to deploy reusable structural and behavioral building blocks, along with some powerful frameworks to gain immediate traction in any setting. The book includes a high-speed multi-dimensional toolkit to organize and deploy the building blocks, essentially weaving the application together at run-time, rather than being hard-wired in program code. Birmingham ties the building blocks together with structural and behavioral metadata, allowing simple, interpreted macros to drive everything from database access, screen layouts, and many aspects of software development normall embedded directly in the software program. The rapid deployment effect this creates allows developers to perform simple surgical application changes, or rapid sweeping rework/enhancement - without changing compiled software. The frameworks discussed include the capability of deploying/changing highly complex applications and their Visual Basic screens, without compiling program code; the capability of building dynamic data models that adapt to rapid change without software change; inter-application object sharing through sockets; dynamic error recovery and management, plus a powerful multi-dimensional toolkit.