With enhanced customers' demand for applications to be built and deployed in a jiffy; the job of developers has become tedious. However, there are tools based on Rapid Application Development framework for developers that can really help them design, develop and deploy applications at a very fast pace.

LyteRAD has made it possible to make simple database application enabling developers to build small applications related to database that can be packaged to use for personal purpose by customers. Many a times, a software development Team Manager would face a situation where he needs to develop an application for in-house use on an urgent basis for simple tasks like stock keeping work or for personal data management.

Though the requirements of the application might not have been demanding but that would require more developers for this application. With a tool like LyteRAD, the Team Manager could himself create such lightweight database applications without even writing a line of code and that too with minimal effort.

About LyteRAD
Rapid Application Development (RAD) is a concept of developing quality applications faster through re-use of software components and gathering of application requirements. Its newest version 2.1 enables you to start developing applications right away once you have installed the LyteRAD setup.

This platform is best suited for developing lightweight database applications, without even having to bother about the server settings, database administration and connection, and above all coding. LyteRAD provides a code free application development platform, where one just has to conceptualize the application and design it accordingly in an intuitive development environment. It is available in two editions: Compact Edition (CE) and Pro.

Also using Pro edition you can mobilize your applications that have been built using LyteRAD. These mini applications provide limited functionality of a desktop LyteRAD application on a J2ME enabled mobile device.

Getting started
With this month's PCQ Professional DVD we are distributing LyteRAD CE. It supports Windows. For Linux platform you can download corresponding LyteRAD from vendor's site. After installing the exe file of LyteRAD, you can launch LyteRAD and start using it. As the Java based application starts, a console window pops up and this makes LyteRAD platform portable across operating systems.

In this article, we will create a demo application wherein we will store employee details. Click on 'Create New Table' in the home page of LyteRAD to create the table structure of the information to be stored in the database. Name the table as the table wizard begins (in our case, PcqDemoTable). We will create it in the following steps and define the schema of the table. The table will have columns as shown in the visual. For each data filed there are predefined datatypes listed from which we can choose the appropriate datatype for a field. For instance, we can select numeric datatype for telephone while for name we can define it as text type. Once the table is created we can start building the application.

When we click on 'Create New Application', an Application Wizard initiates. We name it as 'PcqDemoApps'. On the Add Widgets window, we select the options for Add Data and Table Viewer widget to the application. Add Data widget is to enter data into the table and Table Viewer, as the name suggests is to display the contents of the table. On the following window, we select the table PcqdemoTable for our application and then click finish. We are done with the creation of the application. Through the confirmation window we can launch our newly created application.

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