ZEBRA is a tool for rapid development of various applications with a user interface from a UML model generated by Rational Rose R 98 (or higher) used as the source for code generation. The full-functional "state machine" used in ZEBRA allows to successfully develop the "business logic" and provide interaction of the latter with the user interface. Various types of user interface (SWING, JSP, XML) can be used for interaction with the same business logic; it is even possible to use several types simultaneously.

One of the most important areas of applying ZEBRA is creation of WEB applications.

The result of running the ZEBRA code generator is a set of JAVA interfaces and classes which implement the functionality described by the source UML model.

ZEBRA does not provide tools for long-term storage of objects and their states in databases or other storage facilities. You should consider using additional tools (we recommend Novosoft FL for J2EE).

Business Advantages Zebra reduces the overall cost of development and support by:

• reducing amount of hand-coding
• clear separation of programmatic layers
• improving development cycle
• improving maintainability

Zebra Features

• The design process is performed using a standard CASE tool. This means that project leaders, analysts, architects and developers can communicate using uniform tools and modeling language (UML). The application development cycle becomes more transparent and consistent.
• Generation of the JAVA code is completely automated. Thus the risk of obtaining inconsistency errors is eliminated.
• Due to use of automated code generation, the amount of manual coding is significantly reduced. Meanwhile the ability of using traditional coding utilities is retained.
• Using ZEBRA allows to clearly separate different program layers - business logic and user interface logic.
• Various types of user interface (SWING, JSP, XML ) can be used for interaction with the same business logic, it is even possible to use several types simultaneously.
• ZEBRA provides a built-in system of supporting user sessions.
• The script management system allows to register scripts dynamically (i.e. when the application is running). Each script can represent a Use-case from the task concept. Each registered script can then be used by the users. This allows to immediately modify the application logic during operation.
• A flexible thread management system with numerous settings allows the developer to easily create multithreaded applications without errors.

System Requirements

• Platforms: Windows 95/98/NT/2000 or Unix
• Java 2 platform (Sun JDK1.2 or 1.3)
• RationalRose for model construction