Development process

There are many ways to structure the development process of the backend. Sometimes, the steps are also very much influenced by the desired frameworks in the project.

To give a simple overview, the development process is mainly structured around the following aspects:

• The application: What information needs to come and go (what data is processed)
• The database - What structure is best needed to maintain and exchange this data (Flat files, SQL, DB-Tables, Fields)
• Additional backend operations: What special calculations or features need to be implemented to process the data
• The interface - How to setup the interaction with the frontend (XML, JSON, static requests; is a dedicated API needed as a headless interface for external access)

Usually, this is defined in the specifications of the project, sometimes extended or explained with prototypes or UML (Unified Modelling Language) charts.

With the design-driven strategy, the development process of front and backend is parallel,
but only starting after the interface has been specified (so that the frontend developers know how to call the backend operations). During this parallel work, some dummy interface is setup (no real processed data, but dummy calls and returns) to test the front-end connection with responses from the backend. Afterwards, the real interface with its backend functions is created, and the dummy interface is replaced by the real interface. Once this is done, there are internal system tests, and the whole structure will be enhanced. Favorite