= Dataphor :author: Alphora :doctype: book :data-uri: :lang: en :encoding: iso-8859-1
Dataphor is an open source application development platform designed to streamline the process of designing, developing, and maintaining software applications. Dataphor is not just another set of application framework components, or yet another take on building applications using today's common patterns, such as MVC/MVP; Dataphor re-approaches the problem from a fresh perspective, building from first principles.
See our https://github.com/DBCG/Dataphor[Github] for the newest source code. For more information, check out our http://dataphor.org[website].
[[Documentation]] == Documentation
== Installation
To get started with running Dataphor as a developer, using its Dataphoria IDE, open Dataphor/Dataphor.sln in MS Visual Studio 2013 or another suitable environment, and select Dataphoria as the startup project to run.
While Dataphor is mainly used in production as a federation of SQL DBMSs such as MS SQL Server, Oracle, and Postgres, it also has its own built-in database engine called 'MemoryDevice' or 'SimpleDevice' respectively, and so you can start off using Dataphor without needing to first install any external dependencies.
== Troubleshooting
If Dataphoria fails after startup with an error message citing a missing DLL or such, try using "Rebuild Solution" rather than "Build Solution" in MS Visual Studio as that is more reliable for making sure all the parts of Dataphor have been compiled and are not missing.
Additional troubleshooting help can be found in our <