System and method for building and modifying software applications

• US 7,716,634 B2
• Filed: 01/19/2006
• Issued: 05/11/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 01/19/2006
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Influence Health, Inc. (Mountain Acquisition Holdings LLC)
• Original Assignee: Influence Health, Inc. (Mountain Acquisition Holdings LLC)
• Inventors: Ross, David, Gans, Ronald R.
• Primary Examiner(s): Khatri; Anil
• Application Number:
  US11/334,834
• Publication Number:
  US 20070234274A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,573 Days
• Field of Search: 717104-116
• US Class Current: 717/106
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/34 Graphical or visual programming
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/453 Help systems

Abstract

A system for creating applications, such as web applications, allows a non-technical trained user to build and edit applications. The tool used to build the applications creates the application elements including actions, screens, data, header and footer, and scripts, which are stored and accessed as records in a database. The web application that is created can be exported to and installed within a website.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented system for enabling a non-technical user of the system to dynamically build a software web application, the software web application being in source code and representing a web application capable of running inside a web portal server and working with the web portal server, comprising:

a) user interface software for presenting to the non-technical user a template of at least one user interface displayable on a client computer display screen through which the non-technical user may input project information being called for by the template;

b) a first tier of software codewriters for processing the input project information inputted by the user for defining components to include in the source code software web application;

c) a second tier of software codewriters each for processing the components for dynamically building, respectively, a method of the source code software web application, said second tier being responsive to the project input information, said first tier of software codewriters being able to call said second tier of software codewriters to combine the respective methods into the software web application;

d) a third tier of software codewriters which creates the source code of the software web application in accordance with the method built by said second tier, in which each of the third tier software codewriters does not have access to the project information, said second tier of software codewriters being able to call said third tier of software codewriters to create the source code for the web application; and

e) wherein (i) said user interface software, said first tier, said second tier and said third tier of software codewriters are storable on the web portal server (ii) said user interface software uses said template to construct a plurality of display screens to obtain from the non-technical user parameters for the multiple codewriters, and to provide the parameters to the multiple codewriters to construct the source code for the resulting software web application, (iii) the parameters can be stored as part of a project for dynamically building the source code web application, and (iv) the parameters can be displayed in the series of screens when a project is opened by the non-technical user.

2. The computer-implemented system of claim 1, wherein said codewriters of said third tier create code segments in a first native software language and can be replaced with codewriters that create code segments in a second native software language.

3. The computer-implemented system of claim 1, wherein said template includes screen definitions and references to multiple codewriters.

4. The computer-implemented system of claim 1, wherein said template includes defaults for the source code software web application being built by the non-technical user, at least some of the defaults being displayed to and modifiable by the user in one of the screens.

5. The computer-implemented system of claim 1, wherein the parameters are passed to at least one of said codewriters in an XML data structure.

6. The computer-implemented system of claim 1, wherein said template includes references to form codewriters of said first tier to produce the series of screens.

7. The computer-implemented system of claims 1, wherein the plurality of screens can be accessed in any sequence.

8. The computer-implemented system of claims 1, wherein said user interface software can change the display screens based on user selections from other display screens.

9. The computer-implemented system of claim 1, wherein said template of said user interface software provides screens for inputting information relating to a person'"'"'s healthcare and said source code software web application is a healthcare application.