User Defined Functions

In my last post, I described how you can extend the Gen runtime with user defined functions.

The post described how the use of user defined functions can simplify action diagrams because you can nest functions and also the input and output parameters can be specified using any attribute view of the same domain, whereas imports and exports to action blocks have to use the same entity type or workset views.

It is worth pointing out that whilst this simplifies the action diagram code, the underlying generated code will still need to ‘map’ the input and output views to additional data items that have the same length as the function’s parameters, and hence the fact that the action diagram code appears not to have this extra ‘mapping’ does not mean that there isn’t some runtime overhead associated to this data mapping.

To add a function, you have to code the logic in the same way that you would for an external action block and place the code into a library so that it is available at link time. You also have to define the function to the model, specifying the input and output parameters. These are more restrictive than for a normal action block. You are limited to one output parameter and up to 5 input parameters, and group views are not allowed. Defining the function to the model is quite a complex process, especially if you are not familiar with the Gen meta-model, so you may want to take a look at the QAT Function Manager which automates much of the tedious tasks associated with defining the function. There are also various presentations and documents produced by CA on this subject, so I do not want to repeat them here.

Once you have added your function to the model and coded the logic in C, COBOL or your other target language, you are ready to start using it in the model.

Some of the functions that we have added are:

IET_FIND. This is a replacement for the standard Gen find function which allows you to search a string using wild cards (like %) and other search operators.

IET_GET_ROW_CLICKED. This is a function that returns the clicked row given an x & y co-ordinate returned by the Gen GUI right mouse functions and a list box control. Gen only provides the x & y co-ordinates and to get the row selected, you need to adjust for the scrolling of the list box, the font height and whether the user has changed the default DPI setting in Windows.

IETeGUI functions. For IETeGUI we have developed a range of functions that allow the developer to fine-tune the GUI at execution time, for example, dynamically changing a list box column position, visibility, headings, etc. Using functions greatly simplies the coding when you want to provide detailed control over the GUI runtime.