Rapide integration with Studio Developer

Rapide is IET's product for developing advanced, multi-platform user interfaces with CA Gen. To enable the design of user interfaces that support more advanced features than the standard Gen toolset, Rapide provides a toolset plug-in that is used to specify additional properties in the UI design, for example responsive layouts where the size & position of controls adjusts automatically to fit the device or window size.

VerifIEr integration in Studio Developer

VerifIEr is IET's quality assurance and code checking tool. The best time to detect any errors is whilst you are developing the code rather than after the fact, so it makes sense to integrate the code checking with the development tool.

genIE Integration in Studio Developer

genIE is IET's suite of developer productivity tools, comprising both a plug-in module for toolset based features and other utilities that operate on the encyclopaedia and which are accessed from Object List+ and the GuardIEn client.

With Studio Developer, the genIE functions are now directly accessed from within the action diagram editor.

Generating and Installing Operations Libraries

When considering how to implement the generation editors for Studio Developer, one of the decisions taken was to have separate editors for online, batch and window code like the legacy Gen toolset, but also to separate client and server generation into separate editors. This mean that you could have both the client and server editors open simultaneously and also specify different target properties for each, for example Windows/C for clients and MVS/COBOL for servers.

However we also had to consider how to best handle operations libraries.

Pixel Perfect Positioning

Have you ever had trouble precisely positioning UI controls using the Gen toolset Window designer? Apart from the difficulty of doing so with the mouse (which is solved in Studio Developer by allowing you to move controls one pixel at a time with the keyboard or by typing in the co-ordinates), sometimes you cannot do so.

Synchronise Data Structure

A new feature in Studio Developer is the Synchronise Data Structure function. This shows any discrepancies between the data model and the data structure.

The tool checks the following objects to ensure that they have been specialized for the selected DBMS.

Auto-including objects for generation

A feature of the code generation editors in Studio Developer  is that whilst the editor is open it will detect changes to action blocks and procedure steps and automatically flag them for generation.

You can therefore open the required editors (for example client and server) and then when you have completed your changes to the model, switch to the editor and the objects will be pre-selected for generation.

Action Diagram Keyboard Selection

Unlike the legacy toolset, the new Action Diagram provides a keyboard caret-style cursor which can be moved around the diagram character- by-character, which gives the look-and-feel of being a text editor.  While this is not actually the case underneath, it does make navigation and editing more intuitive and flexible.

Shortcuts for adding NOTE statements

In the Studio Developer action diagram editor, there are some shortcut keys that make it quicker to add a NOTE statement.

Action Diagram Syntax Changes

One of the challenges in developing the new action diagram editor to support keyboard entry was the need to ensure that each part of a statement was unambiguous and easy and quick to enter. This necessitated a few minor changes to the action diagram syntax.

How does Undo work in Studio Developer?

One of the most useful new features in Studio Developer is the undo/redo capability that is provided with the new action diagram editor, UI Designer and Screen Designer.

We are all familiar with using Undo in all sorts of programs that we use on a daily basis. The lack of an undo capability in the Gen toolset comes as a surprise to those new to the tool and is often sorely missed, especially when you accidentally delete something in an action diagram or move controls in the UI designer.

Whilst 'undo' has probably been the most requested enhancement to the Gen toolset over the past 30 years, it was not easy to implement

Modifying an entity type identifier with Studio Developer

With Studio Developer, if you modify the identifier of an entity type, you can synchronise the table’s identifying index and associated foreign keys without needing

Custom Naming for Data Structure Objects

So far the postings on new features in Studio Developer have concentrated on the action diagrammer, but there also some useful enhancements in other parts of the development tools as well.

You can specify rules for how Studio Developer allocates names to attribute DSD names

Block Line Colours

If you have a high number of nesting levels in your action diagram code and need to decide where to place an escape or next pointer, it can be difficult to choose the correct block of code for the escape / next pointer. 

Studio Developer helps by highlighting the block lines for the currently selected statement

Statement Numbers

An optional feature in the new Studio Developer action diagram editor is the ability to display statement numbers:

TODO markers

In the new Studio Developer action diagram editor, if a NOTE statement contains the keyword “TODO” then the locator bar will indicate their presence with blue marker.

Model wide search and replace

Having concluded the series of 10 cool new features in Studio Developer, I thought why stop there? There are a lot more great new features in the tool, so these posts will continue to showcase them in no particular order.

Studio Developer contains a model-wide Search and Replace tool accessed from the Model Explorer menu which allows you to

Studio Developer Cool New Feature #1 - Undo

To conclude our countdown of 10 cool new features of Studio Developer, at #1 it has to be the single most requested enhancement to CA Gen over the past 30 years - Undo (and Redo)!

When editing action diagrams, UI designs or Block Mode screens, you can

Studio Developer Cool New Feature #2 - Action Diagram Editor

At #2 of the cool new features of Studio Developer is the look and feel of the new action diagram editor. Unlike the legacy Gen toolset where you have to use mouse clicks to build up statements, the new editor allows you to type in the statements using the keyboard in an intuitive manner that is similar to most other code editing workbenches like

Studio Developer Cool New Feature #3 - Partially complete statements

One of the strengths of CA Gen is that it imposes a high degree of integrity on the models. For example, when coding an action diagram, you cannot reference an invalid data object or create an invalid statement.

In the legacy Gen toolset you must fully complete each statement before it is added to the action diagram. This can create a lack of flexibility when coding more complex logic since you may wish to partially complete a statement and then review some other part of the logic or check something elsewhere in the model before completing the statement.

The action diagram editor in Studio Developer has been designed to cater for partially complete or invalid statements, and it only requires

Studio Developer Cool New Feature #4 - Copy/Paste

Like the Gen toolset, Studio Developer allows you to copy & paste statements between different action diagrams in the same model (this is called xcopy in the toolset). In addition, unlike the toolset, Studio Developer allows you to copy statements from one model and paste them into an action diagram belonging to a different model.

When pasting statements that reference views, you can also

Studio Developer Cool New Feature #5 - Code Snippets

Code Snippets are a new concept to CA Gen. They allow you to save selected statements to a file and then insert them at a later point into another action diagram, which can also be in a different model.

They operate in a similar way to copy&paste, except that you save the copied statements to the Snippet library rather than the clipboard. The library of code snippets is built

Studio Developer Cool New Feature #6 - View Definition

One of the most frequent activities when developing in Gen is to create new views, usually via view matching or by copying existing views to a new view section.

The old Gen toolset suggests the same view name when copying views, which when you are copying an import view to an export or local view is not very useful because usually you will have view naming standards to follow.

With Studio Developer you can specify preferences that define your view naming standards. In the example below,

Studio Developer Cool New Feature #7 - Pinned Objects

How many times do you want to open a recent or commonly used object like an action diagram, procedure step or work set and have to waste time scrolling through a long list of objects to find it? Conversely, how many times do you use the ability to 'pin' frequently used documents in products like Word or Excel, or use the Recent Files options available in many tools?

If like me the answer is often, then you will enjoy the new feature in the Model Explorer to maintain a recently used objects list

Studio Developer Cool New Feature #8 - New UI Designer

Studio Developer contains all new designers for both GUI windows and block mode screens which make significant improvements to the Gen UI design capability, based on user feedback and enhancement requests provided by the Gen community.

Key features of the new UI Designer include:

Studio Developer Cool New Feature #9 - Model Explorer

At the heart of Studio Developer is the Model Explorer which provides access to objects in the model via a tree structure.

At the top-level there are entries for the most commonly used object types, for example

Studio Developer Cool New Feature #10 - Modern IDE

At number 10, we start off our series on the 10 cool new features with "Modern IDE".

More and more developers learn to code using a modern IDE and so when they start using CA Gen's current toolset, or have to switch between Gen and a modern IDE, the contrast between the user experience of the Gen toolset and the modern development tools

Studio Developer Cool New Features

With the recent announcement of the availability of the new Studio Developer from IET on 31st October, we thought we would count-down to this milestone date by previewing 10 cool new features in Studio Developer. Each day a new feature will be highlighted, so visit this blog every day until launch on the 31st of October!