Rich Client Platform

A Rich Client Platform (RCP) is a piece of software consisting of the following components:

* a core
* a standard bundling framework
* a portable widget toolkit
* file buffers, text handling, text editors
* a workbench (views, editors, perspectives, wizards)
* Update Manager

Programmers can build their own applications on existing platforms. Instead of having to write a complete application from scratch, they can benefit from proven and tested features of the framework provided by the platform. Building on a platform facilitates faster application development and integration, while the cross-platform burden is taken on by the platform developers.

Their creators claim that programs built with RCP platforms are portable to many operating systems while being as rich as client-server applications which use so called fat clients or traditional clients.

Open source examples are the Eclipse, NetBeans and Spring Framework RCPs for Java.

ee also

*Component-based software engineering

External links

*http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/Rich_Client_Platform