Re: New Era Experiences

I have been using NewEra for over a year now, and I am starting to really understand and utilize most everything that the language provides. Its pretty powerful. I think it will be a bigger hurdle to understand the object orientation then it will the Windowing features. The language is based on the old INFORMIX-4GL with over fifty NewEra classes that cover visual, data, file, & connectivity operations. I spend a lot of time with the online Class Reference Help system. If I had to guess, your team will go through/over the following hurdles : 1. After creating small single window apps, you will need to learn and understand how to open windows defined as other WIF files. Its only one or two statements but it is a conceptual step. 2. Then you will want to find out the best ways to pass data back and forth. Global variables will be your first choice/guess but rather look into using the Class extension section to create class variables in your second window that you can set before you open and retrieve in your first window after the window is closed. This may not be your best answer for what you are doing but at least it will expose you to expanding the class/object concept. 3. Next, within a window class you can put as much code behind any of the buttons or events as you would like. After a while though you will realize that some of this code can be shared/reused or whatever. Once you figure out how to extend the class by creating member functions rather than external fucntions or just duplicating code you will have taken another conceptual step. A key here will also be understanding the self pointer and how to get a pointer to the current window object. 4. You will notice a lot of code will be related to using some common classes, such as ixTextbox, ixListBox, ixButton, ixRadioButton & ixCheckbox. Its good to learn these or which ever key classes you will use inside and out. 5. And lastly, there are some advanced concepts that your team will want to reach that you should look for. The ixSupertable is an incredibly powerful class that will help you with a lot of database table maintenance work as well as most other forms of db access. Also, you will know that your team has "arrived" when they no longer use fixed arrays and instead use the ixVector class All in all, once you grasp the "object-oriented" paradigm, NewEra offers a pretty powerful and flexible approach. And if you can't find what you really want or need, you can drop down into C/C++ with the BEGIN_C/END_C statements and add platform specific or technology specific code. Also, any existing C or C++ class libraries can also be "wrapped" in NewEra and be exposed to NewEra as if it was a native NewEra base class. Good Luck!! Jack Suto jsuto@aol.com Sierra Toolworks