WaveMaker Studio Delivers Integrated Tools to Build Mobile, Web Apps

By Frank Ohlhorst

The Enterprise Developer Network (EDN) is a single place where developers in an organization can collaborate on software projects. This is the place where the developer can view the projects across the organization, subscribe to projects and manage member subscriptions as a project owner, and much more. In the future, EDN will also serve as a place where there is a direct integration to the Enterprise and Community AppStore, where developers can download and assemble project modules.

WaveMaker Studio is an open-source rapid API application development and deployment IDE that enables developers to easily create cloud and mobile apps. Studio enables WYSIWYG development using drag-and-drop operations without the need to write code. This rapid application development (RAD) capability dramatically reduces the time in developing custom apps from months to days, sometimes even hours.

WaveMaker Studio includes an integrated version control system. When you open a project, it is checked out from the version control repository. You can pull, push, revert and merge changes back to the repository. The WaveMaker version control system currently supports Subversion and Git.

WaveMaker Studio makes it easy to create Web-based forms that are connected to an underlying database. You import the objects and relationships from an existing database and can define your own data model using the visual Data Model Designer. The objects are then either directly available as widgets or as data sources to which other widgets can be bound.

WaveMaker Studio users can import Web services such as those based on SOAP or REST and RSS feeds. Importing a Web service creates a default service variable for each method of the service, which actually triggers the service in RUN mode and stores the data returned by the service.

WaveMaker Studio enables developers to easily drag and drop chart widgets and tie them to data from other systems via APIs to create custom dashboards. Developers can use various chart widgets such as a line chart, column chart, pie chart, area chart, cumulative line chart, bar chart or donut chart. Developers can also order the data, group the data and show the aggregate functions in their charts.

WaveMaker includes out-of-the-box support for popular security services such as LDAP, CAS and Active Directory. In addition, there is sample demo data source that can be used during development and testing. When security is enabled, all services are restricted to logged-in users by default. WaveMaker Studio also provides role-based access control to control widget visibility.

A prefab is a reusable application part that can be integrated with other prefabs and project components to build new apps. Prefabs enable users to create apps based on Micro-Service-Architecture. Developers can drag and drop prefabs onto the WaveMaker canvas like any other UI widget.

API Designer powers the API-driven development paradigm in WaveMaker. WaveMaker automatically generates APIs for all the services. Developers can build apps using APIs from other apps from inside WaveMaker Studio. Users can design, test and share APIs with other apps, while also controlling the scope of sharing.

Studio’s Auto Responsive UI technology allows users to create an app with an assurance that it will adapt itself to devices like mobile phones, tablets and desktops. Developers can preview their app using the appropriate Device Preview mode.

With Studio, developers can instantly deploy their applications to the cloud, without needing to download files, provision instances or install a software stack. Developers can also test their applications in real time. Plus, once deployed, app owners can perform application lifecycle management tasks for their apps.

WaveMaker generates modular client-side code (AngularJS, CSS and HTML) incorporating industry best practices. The code can be easily extended and maintained using any other popular IDEs such as Eclipse or even a text editor, since WaveMaker projects support the Maven build automation tool.