Application Wizard

Application Wizard —Default Forms

Clarion excels at helping developers deliver every project with an structured approach. Its Application Tree dialog (illustration below) provides a hierarchically arranged overview of the project, and even marks procedure "penciled in" but not yet started as "To Do". The Application Wizard takes advantage of all the metadata stored in the Data Dictionary, and (optionally, of course), lays out an entire Application Tree for a new project.

To run the Application Wizard, the developer selects File > New > Application from the menu, and provides a file name, then selects a dictionary. A series of wizard dialogs appear. The developer may select individual tables necessary for the application:

The wizard also allows options for the overall look and feel.

It then begins creating the application. It “reads” the Dictionary metadata, looking at the relations between tables. Where it finds a parent table, it creates a browse window. Selecting a record in the browse provides an update form. Each update form contains additional tabs on which a list box browse on a child table resides. Selecting a record in the child’s browse table brings up an edit form for that record. If the child table has a child file associated with it, another tab appears... and so on.

For this particular application, the Application Generator creates eighteen discreet procedures, each consisting of either a browse window, update form, report, plus the application frame, because this will be an MDI application. The end user may open multiple views of the various tables, even opening more than one window upon the same table. Many of the procedures are called both from the application’s global menu, and available from various buttons and actions within other procedures.

The controls presented on each window reflect all of the options defined in the data dictionary (such as a particular column must be edited with a spin box, which knows minimum, maximum, and step values). Therefore, in many cases the developer simply opens up the windows and rearranges elements as desired. In a large application containing many windows, having a default "layout" in place saves many hours of work.

Home

Shop.SoftVelocity