Managing the Development Cycle Overview

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The development cycle described here is a subset of Application Lifecycle Management (ALM), dealing specifically with the part of the cycle that includes the implementation and control of actual development tasks.

Requirements Management

Requirements management tools enable you to add, remove, and update requirements for your software project. A fully integrated tool also enables you to create links between the requirement specification and the portions of the code within your software project that fulfill the requirement.

Source Control

A source control system allows you to manage versions or renditions of your project files. Most source control systems maintain a central repository of code and allow you to check-in, check-out, update, commit, and otherwise manage your source files.

User Interface Design

RAD Studio provides a rich environment for designing a user interface. The Form Designer offers a variety of alignment tools, font tools, and visual components for building many types of applications, including MDI and SDI applications, tabbed dialog boxes, and data aware applications.

UML Modeling

The UML Modeling provides the means to document your class designs using a visual paradigm. The UML Modeling can help you improve the performance, effectiveness, and maintainability of your applications by creating a detailed UML-like visual model. As you load your Delphi project and turn on the modeling support, you can use the Model View to get a hierarchical graphical view of all your classes. You can use the Diagram View to view UML-like diagrams of your application classes. This feature can help you visualize the relationships between objects in your application, and can assist you in developing and implementing.

Compilation, Building, and Debugging

RAD Studio provides MSBuild Overview, the industry standard build engine, along with an integrated debugger. You can compile only the changed elements of the project by using the Compile command. To build the entire project regardless of changes, use the Build command. Projects with subprojects and multiple source files can be built all together, or you can build each project individually.

The integrated debugger allows you to set watches and breakpoints, and to step through, into, and over individual lines of code. A set of debugger windows provides details on variables, processes, and threads, and lets you drill down deeply into your code to find and fix errors.

See Also