Believe it - Now it is possible with the remarkable GX Performance Framework. Why waste all that time reprogramming mechanisms when that can be done once and reused. The GX Performance Framework with its Page Engine and Active Dictionary changes the way we think about the development process for applications. The whole application is in the database - you can program around it if you want but in principle you don't have to - you can bring a database to the web for interactive update without programming.

I suppose you will say - well it depends on what you mean by programming - don't you have to run some scripts to load the dictionary?

Of course you do - but the tools are available once you have done this to modify and extend the data definitions and screen definitions and add your own data elements without having any of the things you might want to change like prompts, conditions, data types, rules, and so on embedded in DLLs or other executables. You can add data to a screen just by adding its definition - and sometimes the screens are built for you without your doing anything at all except saying I want to update an element with this name. Moreover, every element is securable: hidden, protected, read-write, gated by conditions that once set up are easy to attach to any part of the application.

What about data analysis, you ask, is this also magically automated?

No - we couldn't take away that essential human element in the real creativity behind applications of this class. You need to know the business and its rules, and what to keep, and you need to gather and name the data. It is a primal task that goes back at least to the Caesars if not to the beginning of the human experiment. Now you can get really good at it, though, because it is in essence all you have to do to make things work the way you want.

The Page Engine and Dictionary are part of the GX Performance Framework. We have written several applications with the framework: the GX G&C product, available since 2002; the GX Executive Information System, in use since 2003; the Infrastructure Border Initiative, in production since March 2005; the AMA Task & Time system (and its Project Management component), in production since January 2005; and fully integrated with any of these, the Interactive Logic Modeler.

You mean we can really use the model now and all its indicators and not just publish it in static form or leave it in a drawer?

Yes - all this and more to come. We are at the beginning of an era in which some of the hassles and delays in responsiveness for changing simple things will be at an end. It is not as if the creative work is done, but you can extend your applications and integrate them with so much less cost. Our measurements show a reduction in effort of 2/3 over traditional development. The attached research report tells you more.