Patent ID: 8132149

Claim:
A designer tool for developing a client application comprising application components, the designer tool comprising: a user facing module, executed in a computer processor, selected from a group consisting of an editor, a viewer, a wizard module, a dialog module and a combination thereof; the editor module interacting with a user of the tool; the viewer used to create and modify definitions of the application components, and relationships between the application components; the wizard module assisting the operation of the editor and the viewer, and guiding the development of the client application, the wizard module being step-driven by the dialog after gathering information from the user of the tool via a user interface; a data model selected from a group consisting of a design time data model, a runtime data model and a combination thereof, the design time data model representing a state of the client application under development, accepting a set of commands included in the user facing module that affect a state of the design time data model, and interacting with the user facing module by notifying user facing module when the state of the design time data model; the runtime data model representing the state of an emulated application under development; a service module selected from a group consisting of a model validator, an application generator, a build service, a skin manager, a backend connector, a localization service a deployment service, a security service and a combination thereof; the model validator validating a representation of the client application by the design time data model; the application generator collaborating with the design time data model to obtaining a content of the application components, the application generator further utilizing the model validator to check definitions of the application components and mapping description information; the build service building the client application in a deployable form, the build service further preparing and packaging a resource bundle with the client application in the deployable form; the skin manager loading visual elements defined by a screen component of the data model; the backend connector building a suitable application message and data set for, and communicating with backend data sources; the localization service supporting a build time localization of user visible strings and creating the resource bundle file; a deployment service deploying the client application; and a security service signing the client application; wherein the user facing module observes and responds to changes in the data model of the client application and wherein the service module provides facilities to the user facing module.