A Better Way To Write Pick/Browse Lists [1/4]

Informix claims a ten fold increase in productivity via 4gl (as opposed to C), and they may be right, but the development of picklists and viewscreens remains prohibitively inefficient. Various tools speed development considerably, if you and all your users are running on Next stations, or X terminals, or whatever. But these tools are sometimes inadequate and never general. They don't generate or maintain one software system that you can control, that runs all your screen interfaces via common source code. In this sense, 4gl-gx is definitely the correct concept. but then you are still stuck writing all those input arrays and forms and cursor control and ON KEY F6, and the same stuff over and over and over, but slightly different each time. We have developed an enhancement to 4gl that has improved our productivity **CONSIDERABLY**. Give the select statement that defines your view, the record to hold the fetched rows, the headers and help lines, some color parameters, and some functions to format lines and implement selections, and the system builds the screen for you. It handles cursor control and pick functions for pick-one or pick-many lists. It also calls the functions you name when various function keys are pressed. (See the next article for the difficulties involved in adding function pointers to 4gl.) Your functions can then expand detail, open subviews (using the same system recursively), or anything else you wish. Combined with 4gl-gx, or your own X/Next/whatever interface packages, it represents a powerful development environment. The next three articles briefly describe the system. If you are interested, please contact me via phone or email. We would be happy to license our package for very reasonable rates, to individuals or to companies. I also welcome suggestions for improvements in our package. -- I do more all day -- than most people do before 9 A.M. Karl Dahlke eklhad@siss81.sis.rpslmc.edu (312) 942-8040