When you go to http://demo.qafe.com, the first application that starts is the “Showcase” Application.

This Showcase application is a QAFE Application, written in QAML. In the tree on the right, you’ll see Components and Events.
The source code of the components are samples of what we know as “Declarative UI“. Declarative UI is a buzzword and developers lately tend to move in this direction (also technologies like GWT and ADF, Oracle’s Implementation of Java Server Faces (JSF))

Events is the first part that makes QAFE really unique. Why ? Because even the processing of events to get to the database/java class is done in a declarative way (yes, it’s true : NO knowledge of javascript, actionscript, etc) is needed! For Database Developers no knowlegde of Java or Object Orientation is needed!

So when you want to handle a mouseclick on a button, all you do is define an event with listeners and a set of generic builtin functions, all in QAFE’s XML, QAML. This event is then translated at runtime to the specific code for the specific technology (in case of GWT it is in fact Javascript, in case of Adobe Flex, it is ActionScript). Check out the source code for the Show/Hide showcase (in the source code tab).

This is the first step towards Declarative SOA.
To summarize QAFE:

QAFE = Declarative SOA + Declarative UI.

More on the Declarative SOA soon.