RAD - technical definition

(1) (Rapid Application Development) Developing systems incrementally and delivering working pieces every three to four months, rather than waiting until the entire project is programmed before implementing it. Over the years, many information projects have failed, because, by the time the implementation took place, the business had changed.

RAD employs a variety of automated design and development tools, including CASE, 4GLs, visual programming and GUI builders, all of which help create prototypes and running applications faster than by coding program statements a line at a time. The term was coined years ago by industry guru James Martin and focuses on personnel management and user involvement as much as on technology. Joint application development is another RAD concept (see JAD).

The term is also used in a more general way to refer to an environment that produces applications quickly and efficiently.

(2) (RADiation dose) An earlier unit of measurement of absorbed radiation. Defined in the centimeter-gram-second (CGS) system as equal to 100 ergs of energy absorbed by one gram of matter, the rad was superseded by the "gray," an SI unit where 100 rad are equal to one gray. See radiation hardened and gray.