A rich client platform (RCP) is software consisting of the following components:

• A core (microkernel), lifecycle manager
• A standard bundling framework
• A portable widget toolkit
  Widget toolkit
  In computing, a widget toolkit, widget library, or GUI toolkit is a set of widgets for use in designing applications with graphical user interfaces...
  
  
• File buffers, text handling, text editors
• A workbench (views, editors, perspectives, wizards)
• Data binding
  Data binding
  Data binding is a general technique that binds two data/information sources together and maintains synchronization of data. This is usually done with two data/information sources with different types as in XML data binding. However, in UI data binding, data and information objects of the same type...
  
  
• Update manager

With a RCP, 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

Software development

Software development is the development of a software product...

 and integration

System integration

In engineering, system integration is the bringing together of the component subsystems into one system and ensuring that the subsystems function together as a system...

, 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 system

Operating system

An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

s while being as rich as client-server

Client-server

The client–server model of computing is a distributed application that partitions tasks or workloads between the providers of a resource or service, called servers, and service requesters, called clients. Often clients and servers communicate over a computer network on separate hardware, but both...

 applications which use so called fat client

Fat client

A fat client is a computer in client–server architecture or networks that typically provides rich functionality independent of the central server...

s or traditional clients.

Open-source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 examples are the Eclipse

Eclipse (software)

Eclipse is a multi-language software development environment comprising an integrated development environment and an extensible plug-in system...

, NetBeans

NetBeans

NetBeans refers to both a platform framework for Java desktop applications, and an integrated development environment for developing with Java, JavaScript, PHP, Python, Groovy, C, C++, Scala, Clojure, and others...

and Spring Framework RCPs for Java.

External links

• RCP wiki
• Projecto Colibri RCP
• NetBeans Platform
• Enterprise Eclipse RCP Article by Peter Friese und Stefan Reichert (in German)