The bottom line

Client-server systems are far more complex than their host-based predecessors, and future technologies promise further complexity. The first generation of client-server development tools combined a simple database access capability with a visual programming environment, and provided an easy way to learn about client-server technology. But, as companies move forward in the implementation of large, mission-critical client-server systems, much more capability is required in the tools used to build them.

The new generation of client-server development tools must address the issues of scale that arise when large development teams construct and deploy major mission-critical applications. Synon's Obsydian is such a tool.

With Obsydian, you work with the three crucial prerequisites of scalability:

An application model. It's the dividing line between software development as an art and software development as an engineering discipline. Because developers can model business objects, user interfaces, business rules and implementation objects, productivity is improved and quality is enhanced. Design changes automatically propagate throughout the application using sophisticated inheritance mechanisms.

An example of Obsydian's power is that Synon's customers have no Year 2000 problems!

A construction process. Large, prebuilt components called business objects maximize productivity. By comparison to the reusable components provided by other tools, Obsydian's business objects are like today's most advanced microprocessor next to a single transistor.

And Obsydian's building blocks are prefabricated and pretested, greatly reducing the burden on developers to debug.

A design repository. It allows team members to contribute to and share application designs, and facilitates the reuse of common components.

Obsydian's repository also supports configuration of the application model to deploy the finished application in many versions, on many target platforms and in many national languages.

Last but not least, in today's open environments, there is an imperative to invest in the development of core business systems, without the concern that the chosen platform may become obsolete before that investment has yielded an adequate return. Which means you can either wait until the dust settles, or adopt a development environment that insulates application designs and designers from technological upheaval.

In an age where the pace of change is accelerating faster than ever, and the pressure to produce is mounting on IT departments worldwide, the first of those options seems simply unacceptable. Which means you need a sophisticated yet flexible integrated development environment, supplied by a company dedicated to protecting its customers' investments in mission-critical applications.