The insurance industry has invested heavily in establishing product definitions through standards like Polaris and Acord, as well as the in-house definitions each insurer has builds up. IAB's meta-programming core pragmatically uses those definitions, meaning that this investment can be leveraged to generate those applications and affinity channels.
This meta programming approach lends itself to the use of interpreted languages which facilitate a greater level dynamism in the solution. Interpreted languages facilitate meta programming techniques without having to generate the source code [generative programming].
The obvious choice of interpreted language is Ruby for its economical intuitive syntax, a rapidly increasing mindshare, and a large number of functionally useful gems and plug-ins.
IAB can also be used to meta-program a Java or .NET based solution. There are two approaches here:-
- Fully flexible IAB code base deployed using JRuby or IronRuby
- Generative solution that produces intermediate Java or C# code (we have an example of this approach under development for a commercial UK Insurer - we hope to be able to make the details public soon)