4GL DEVELOPERS, IMPROVE PRODUCTIVITY: FourGen® CASE Tools and FourGen® Accounting software (Session Forum 2004)

www. gillani.com Syed Kamal Gillani, Inc. (formerly FourGen) Phone: (972) URL: Informix 4GL Developers, Improve Productivity: FourGen® CASE Tools and FourGen® Accounting Software

www. gillani.com  How many Informix 4GL programmers present?  How many have used any RAD tools to develop 4GL apps?  How many have used FourGen CASE tools, aka Informix-4GL “FORMS”, “Menu’s”? Informix 4GL Developers, Improve Productivity: FourGen® CASE Tools and FourGen® Accounting Software

www. gillani.com FourGen® CASE Tools Highlights  Form Painter  Screen Code Generator  Featurizer  Report Generator  Menu’ing System  iDesktop (Windows GUI front-end or browser-enabled front-end)  Source Code Control System  Object Oriented Design  XML based Schema Management Tools

www. gillani.com FourGen® CASE Tools Code Generation Path

www. gillani.com Advantages of using FourGen CASE Tools  Increased productivity over 3GL development  Many times faster than 4GL coding  Speeds up initial development AND reduces ongoing cost of program maintenance  Over 80% of the cost of software applications is ongoing maintenance  Facilitates user/developer communication

www. gillani.com Why FourGen® CASE Tools?  Structured Code  Automatic Code Documentation  Code Design Standards  User Interface Standards  Version Control  Generated code is Modifiable By Design ™ (MBD)  Multi-language Code Generation

www. gillani.com Why FourGen® CASE Tools?  GUI & Character user selected interfaces OR

www. gillani.com FourGen® CASE Tools Form Painter  Create new or update existing forms  Creates 100% Informix 4GL compatible.per’s  Various types of forms supported – header, header/detail, query, zooms etc.  Easy to define zooms, lookups & validation functionality  Link many forms – easily & effectively  Developer-friendly interface  Detail Explosion – Present additional detail data on same screen

www. gillani.com FourGen® CASE Tools Screen Code Generator  100% Informix 4GL Code  “Hooks” in generated code allow developers to add custom code  Organizes code into separate.4GL’s namely  globals.4gl, main.4gl, header.4gl, detail.4gl, midlevel.4gl for input screens  Dynamic arrays for line items – no more arr_max hassle  Automatically generates GUI Code

www. gillani.com FourGen® CASE Tools Screen Code Generator  Program Main – Header

www. gillani.com FourGen® CASE Tools Screen Code Generator  Program Main – Header / Detail

www. gillani.com FourGen® CASE Tools Screen Code Generator  Browse Form

www. gillani.com FourGen® CASE Tools Screen Code Generator  Zoom

www. gillani.com FourGen® CASE Tools Screen Code Generator  Query

www. gillani.com FourGen® CASE Tools Screen Code Generator  Extension Form

www. gillani.com FourGen® CASE Tools Screen Code Generator  Add-on Detail

www. gillani.com FourGen® CASE Tools Screen Code Generator  Add-on

www. gillani.com FourGen® CASE Tools Featurizer  Merges generated code & custom code  Generated code remains untouched  FourGen® Featurizer reads instructions in extension files to modify source code  With Block commands you place code based on the inserted block tags  Add new business logic or customize flow logic without modifying original source code  Change in a screen or schema, just regenerate code to reapply your changes

www. gillani.com FourGen® CASE Tools Report Generator  Create Informix 4GL reports programs using report image file  Organizes code into separate.4GL’s namely  globals.4gl, main.4gl, report.4gl, midlevel.4gl, lowlevel.4gl for report programs  Includes the following sections  Layout  Attributes  Select  Language  Schedule  Concurrency

www. gillani.com FourGen® CASE Tools Menu’ing System  FourGen® Menus  Menu options can be single or multiple characters with description  Flexible menu option format  Each menu & submenu has its own directory  Menu option can use hotkey option  Predefined structure can be utilized for Enterprise Application  Windows Explorer-like Menu interface available via iDesktop for GUI

www. gillani.com FourGen® CASE Tools iDesktop  Windows based GUI generator  Reads database for screens that make up a program  Generates VB Forms from Informix Forms  Creates GUI Executables from VB Forms  GUI menu program presents menus in WIN Explorer-like format  SSH compatible for added security

www. gillani.com FourGen® CASE Tools iDesktop Win 2000

www. gillani.com FourGen® CASE Tools Source Code Control System  FourGen® SCCS originally developed in mid 1980’s  Builds on top of sccs utilities in UNIX  Advantages  Extremely robust  Easy to use  Tight control of code  Included in FourGen® CASE Tools

www. gillani.com FourGen® CASE Tools Source Code Control System  FourGen® SCCS primary programs sccs.inChecks in files sccs.outChecks out files sccs.statStatus of a file or files sccs.sdiffDifferences between two versions of a file

www. gillani.com FourGen® CASE Tools Schema Management Tools  FourGen DBmerge  Allows you to control schema  Provides audit trail of schema changes when used with FourGen® SCCS  All schema information & standard data stored in XML format

www. gillani.com FourGen® CASE Tools Schema Management Tools  FourGen Dbmerge programs dbmergeReads schema XML files, compares & generates script to bring target database current dbdataReads data XML files & generates instructions to load them dbrunExecute script file from dbmerge & dbdata dbunloadUnload schemas & data to XML files

www. gillani.com Dynamic Array Model – No more hard coding of # of array elements. User Defined Notes on Screens – Multiple note types and notes for each line of detail. Add-on hdr/dtl, add-on view hdr/dtl, extension hdr/dtl etc. are few of new Form Types Detail Explosion – Detail to Detail line for hdr/dtl screens Zoom picker function standardized Grids replace temporary tables – index ‘em, random access ‘em, unload ‘em even in.csv formats Primary Keys instead of Row ID’s Global elements reduction – scratch, sql_filter, sql_order removed – p & q variables moved to header.4gl & detail.4gl files Function Metrics – Trace your program control within functions DB Merge Utilities Made Easy – Supports XML formats Defer or force referential constraints using Library Functions Encryption Functions available – handy for securing your data SIGNAL Trapping FourGen® CASE Tools NEW FEATURES in FourGen CASE Tools V8.1

www. gillani.com iDeveloper – GUI development environment EGL – Websphere Development Edition Integration Porting FourGen CASE Tools to DB2 FourGen® CASE Tools Future Releases

www. gillani.com Applications Developed using FourGen CASE Tools Gillani’s iDistribute and Financials v8.1 iDistribute - A complete end-to-end Supply Chain/Distribution Management solution (formerly FourGen/Endura SCM) delivering extraordinary business results for users since iDistribute - The system provides advanced Order Management capabilities, integrated with a comprehensive Warehouse and Branch Inventory Management, Purchasing and Replenishment System. Financials - An Integrated ERP, Accounting System (formerly FourGen Accounting, FourGen Enterprise, Endura Enterprise) providing GL, AP, AR, FA, Budget Management, Credit Management and Financial Reporting functionality. WRITTEN USING FOURGEN CASE TOOLS ! CORNERSTONE OF “MODIFIABILITY BY DESIGN ™ ” CONCEPT !

www. gillani.com Questions? Contact: Syed Kamal Phone: (972) URL: Informix 4GL Developers, Improve Productivity: FourGen® CASE Tools and FourGen® Accounting Software