1. A computer-implemented method performed by one or more processors for developing an application, the method comprising: using the one or more processors to identify one or more pre-constructed business process components using a third party portal; presenting a pre-built user interface for each of the one or more business process components, each user interface comprising an example of a visual representation of a particular business process component associated with the user interface; receiving a selection for at least one of the presented user interfaces; identifying a design-time model representation of at least one of the pre-constructed business process components associated with the selected user interface to form at least a part of a particular application; generating an abstract representation of the particular application from the design-time model representation of the at least one of the pre-constructed business process components, wherein the abstract representation includes a representation of a graphical user interface described by design-time model representations associated with the particular application; and sending the abstract representation to a runtime platform for transformation into a runtime representation specific to the runtime platform, wherein the abstract representation is generated based on an executable graphical user interface language (XGL).