What is RCP Components Android?

RCP stands for rich client protocol which you can find in your android phone. RCP components or rich client protocol component is a programming tool. If you are just a normal user of an android phone, you don’t have to look for it. But if you’re a developer then RCP components are of great use for you.

So, let’s start and look into more details on what is RCP components and how you can use RCP components.

What does RCP Component do?

Let’s say you are a website developer and you have to develop a website from scratch. Now if you’ll start designing the website from scratch then it will take a lot of time. At the same time, if you can get some template or framework, your work will be easy.  The exact same thing is being done by RCP.

RCP allows the android developer to create applications without creating the tool first. It means it’s a framework allowing you to write the code and get the work done.

RCP components are really helpful to create and publish the android applications quickly without much thinking about compatibility, connection, etc. These parameters will be taken care of by the framework.

What is a Framework?

RCP is basically a framework that is built up with several small-small frameworks to get your work done. Following are the main components of RCP-

• A core
• lifecycle manager
• bundling framework
• portable widget toolkit
• file buffers
• text handling
• text editors
• workbench
• data binding and
• update-manager

Open Source Software

Basically, there are two kinds of software in the market-

1. Open-source software
2. Licensed software

Open-source software is those which are available for free. You can use that software for both personal as well as commercial use for free. For example, tools like Hadoop, R, Python, etc. are the perfect example of open-source software. Android is an open-source project and anyone can contribute to it. And Android is open-source and the same does RCP Components.

The industry is crazy about the open-source!

Here are some of the major benefits of using open source technologies-

1. Fewer hardware costs- Usually these are compact and optimized for use in light environment
2. High-Quality Software- Many contributors ensure that there is no bug and provide great quality
3. No vendor lock-in period- As these are open source projects and so you don’t have to make a commitment to any vendor. But you may need to check with the vendor if you’re looking for additional services. For example, Hadoop is an open-source project but if you need the complete package, you might need to connect to any Hadoop distributions.
4. Scalable- As these are open source and so there is no limit on the number of users and data amount. Whenever you need extra, simply expand your hardware, and you are done.

If you will look into how top websites are using the technology, you’ll find around 75% rely on open-source software.

Android vs iOS: Do we have RCP components for iOS?

Coming to the last section of this RCP components post, let’s talk about Android vs iOS and whether we have RCP components for iOS or not.

Well, the straight answer is no. RCP components are only for the Android devices as it has been built on Android operating systems.

Usually, it has been seen that android has been a little liberal when it comes to apps. You’ll find millions of apps in the Google Play store. And even if you’ve developed an app for android which has been rejected by Google to add in the Play store, still you can add that separately and share a link to users to install. Even though there are multiple other app stores for android where you can get those added. Even Android allows third-party apps installation by enabling unknown sources.

Conclusion

These were all about what is RCP components in Android devices. If you’re a developer, it will be a great help while developing the apps for android phones.

I hope you got a fair idea of why we have RCP components, the difference between iOS and Android, and more. If you’ve any further questions, feel free to comment below.