Re: Suggested Changes to 4gl

I'm posting the suggestion below for John Oliver (oliverj@eymsl.co.nz), whose posts aren't getting out to the real world. John Oliver writes... >How about dynamic use of I4GL call command, i.e be able to issue:- > call func_name >where func_name is a char variable storing the name of a function. I've used >this in Ingres where we store a menu tree structure in a database table such as > calling_menu, display_title, function_name >Using this, you can use a generic menu subroutine, and be able to change >around the application menu structure without recompiling the application. >Informix is well suited to this approach due to its small executable sizes. >You could just link all the modules of an application together, which would >give good menu/calling performance. > >Under the current I4GL, this is impossible. The best you can do us use the run >command to run named stand alone executables, but this leaves a whole >lot of sleeping parent processes around when leaves of complex menu trees >are reached. > >Oh yeah, the other thing that would be neat would be to have two dimensional >screen arrays, i.e. be able to reference the i'th column across a row. It >seems that if you can have 2-D program arrays, you should be able to have 2-D >screen arrays. >-- >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > John Oliver, Ernst & Young Management Sciences, Auckland, NEW ZEALAND > e-mail: oliverj@eymsl.co.nz Telephone: 64-9-377-4790 Fax: 64-9-377-3554 > Mail: PO Box 2146, Auckland, NEW ZEALAND > Disclaimer: Views expressed are entirely my own. -- Hugh Grierson Fujitsu/ICL New Zealand - Software Development Centre hugh@nezsdc.icl.co.nz Speaking for myself only. See figure 1. Quote of the decade: "We're not just talking about unpopulated areas of the Southern Hemisphere anymore" [Pres. Bush, on the Ozone hole]