Bridging traditional and object technologies: Creating transitional applications

Object technology is a well-known advance for developing software that is receiving a great deal of attention. Unfortunately, the educational investment required and the additional complexity introduced by most tools that support this technology have dampened its rate of adoption by many enterprise developers. To bridge this skills and technology gap, development tool strategies are presented that encourage a more evolutionary approach, easing the transition. Rather than requiring totally new skills and tools, these strategies take advantage of the strengths and familiarity of traditional facilities—they hide much of the raw technological complexities and yet exploit the strengths of object technology by supporting the creation of transitional applications. The strategies described fall into two categories: bridging between the traditional and object worlds, and masking the complexities of object technology by exploiting higher-level rapid application development techniques.