Classify

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Powerful Object Orientation!

Ever wondered if object orientation could live up to its promise of enhanced re-usability, simplified maintenance and increased speed of development? Classify will. You don't have to be a technical expert to use Classify. In fact, to build your application you hardly need any knowledge of object orientation. Classify will give you the power to concentrate on what your customer wants, instead of how you should build it.

When defining an application, you'll want to spend maximum time on functionality and minimum time on technical aspects of the application. Classify will give you all the tools you need to build powerful, stable and user friendly applications, without the need to spend hours programming the user interface and database management. In fact, Classify will even help you in structuring the application through the use of functional modules.

Classify turns the theory of object orientation into an easy to use and yet very powerful set of building tools. Based on DataFlex 3.0, the first 4GL providing object oriented features, Calvin Consultancy has constructed a set of class definitions (packages) that will greatly simplify the construction of an application. Often referred to as an Application Framework.

Database Integrity and Consistency

One of the main concerns when building a large application is to keep the data in the database consistent. Classify offers you a centralized Data Dictionary, where you can formalize all the file and field related validations. The properties per file include:

Referential Integrity

Should child records be deleted when the parent is deleted; should the parent be deleted only when no child records exist; should no checking be performed.

Delete Validation

What conditions need to be met before a record can be deleted?

All definitions involving relations will recurse. This means you don't need to bother about grandchildren being orphaned or grandtotals in grandparent files. All validations are done prior to the save, thereby preventing a "file not open" error halfway through a save operation or a situation where half of the child-records are deleted before it is detected that not all children can be deleted.

FIELD RELATED PROPERTIES

Entry Options

All entry options supported by DataFlex (except Check and Range) can be set in the database description, and will be forced upon every entry screen. Of course, the programmer can add specific options in the data entry program itself.

Validations

Field validation (either standard or custom defined procedures) can be defined per field and will be performed whenever the specified field is entered. Again, the programmer can choose to add extra validations per data entry screen. However, he can not bypass these routines.

Entry and Exit Procedures

It is also possible to provide standard entry and exit messages per field. This makes it possible (among other things) to prevent an user to enter a specific field based on the contents of another field. By returning a non-zero value, the cursor will just skip the field. Values of other fields are obtained through the pField_Value property, allowing you to write entry and exit functions (validations as well), independent of the screen layout. In fact, the field needed for the functions might not even be on the screen.

Functional Relationships

Classify allows you to specify functional relationships (like subtotals) for every field. These relationships are specified by a create, delete, backout and update procedure. These procedures are only executed when the field changes; if the related file is not open, the save is canceled.

Specifying these procedures per field has several advantages. First of all, the procedures per field are mostly simple, standard procedures. But furthermore this mechanism allows you to update non related fields without the need to open the related files.

Validations Based On A List Of Choices

Many times a field value must be selected from a limited list of possible choices (either single-select or multi-select). Classify offers you several ways of implementing these validations. You can even choose to let the end-user extend/modify the tables themselves.

List Fields

In Classify, you only need to specify what fields you want in your prompt list (and in what order). All the rest is automatic. If the total of all fields is to wide for your screen, Classify will allow horizontal scrolling to view all the data in the list. Classify will even allow the end-user to add fields to the list, or remove them, at runtime.

User Friendly

Of course, the data dictionary will help you to build an application with a consistent user-interface (all the same options on the same field), but Classify will do more for you. For starters, there is the context sensitive button bar, displaying all the hot-keys you need for the type of object you are in. Of course, these buttons are also clickable (and repeatable where appropriate). If a user is experienced, and prefers more screen space over a button bar, he can switch it off in the user configuration program.

Draggable, Saveable Windows

The status bar will display information about the current field. This information is extracted from the help system. Furthermore it will display the name of the user logged in. The action bar will display date and time, as well as the title of the program (also extracted from the help system).

All data entry windows are draggable, both by mouse and by the use of the cursor keys. Windows grouped together can be moved individually or as a group through the use of the special drag menu. This allows easy repositioning of an entire group of windows. Once the optimal position is set by the user, he can save the coordinates in the user configuration file.

When multiple functions are activated the colors, also set by the user, will indicate the function currently having the focus. Switching between functions is simplified through the use of a picklist: a special pop-up window displaying all the functions still being worked on (whether on the screen or not, similar to the Windows task manager). Since some users prefer a screen with several functions active and other like a screen with just one function at the time, Classify allows the user to de-activate a function, while retaining all the data (the function will still be listed in the picklist). This function could be compared with the Windows "shrink to icon" functionality.

A user can also remove a function from memory, thus freeing up memory to allow other functions to be started.

Special Data Entry Functions

Although Classify is designed to make application development easy, the end-user is the final judge of any application. That's why we have spent a lot of time on the user-interface. Any field taking part in an index, automatically will supply a prompt list on the main index of that field; any related field will show a prompt list displaying the contents of the related files. If it is a table-validated field, the prompt key will call up the table.

But there are a number of less obvious advantages to the Classify data entry modules:

The user can toggle the retain function of any field (or all fields at once) "on the fly";
When updating the same field in multiple records, the user can leave the cursor at this field, because Classify will remember the index used last, and perform all finds based on this index, if the current field does not appear in any index;
The user-configurable auto-clear-state is implemented in three stages: (a) after every save, (b) only after saving a new record and (c) never;
Data loss is handled depending on the user configuration, i.e. a user can opt to be warned of data loss (a) only when de-activating the function without retaining the contents (this applies even when he exits the program), (b) when pressing clear, (c) when one of the above situations apply or he presses 'find next' or 'find previous' or (d) at all the above situations and when pressing the find key;
All edit-fields supply full text-editor functionality, including explode to full-screen, find, find and replace and block functions;
Due to the "zoom concept", the end-user can select which items he want on the screen permanently and which items he only needs occasionally (which not only helps the user, but also lightens the task of screen design for the programmer).

Standard Utilities

Classify offers some standard utilities for the end-user, such as a calculator, a calendar, a file editor, a DOS-shell and login without leaving the program. All these standard features are offered from the Desktop pull-down.

And of course, Classify will offer a full context sensitive help system. We even offer the possibility to enter installation specific help information in a separate field. And once this is done, you can just reprint the user manual from the help system. No need to do double updates. All you need is Ventura to do the lay-out. A standard style-sheet is provided, but you can easily adapt this to match the manual with your documents in your organization.

Full Security

No system could ever be complete without a sound security system. Classify allows you to set up access rights on several levels, thus allowing all the flexibility you will ever need. And all this without programming! Talking about security: Classify will automatically log all serious errors, so you can review later exactly what happened. If you have the E-mail - option installed (available shortly), you can even direct a message to the supervisor when specific errors occur.

GET CLASSIFIED!

Don't stumble from one experiment to another. Start working with object power. Order Classify now! We will supply you with packages, documentation and full sources.

One of the tools that comes with Classify is the WorkBench. The WorkBench is a full data-dictionary registration database, that will generate all code needed for the Data Dictionary and print your end-user documentation as well, a tool for functional design of Object Oriented systems and a tool for documenting your own classes.

And, of course, Calvin Consultancy will continuously add new features to Classify, to make sure you will have the best DataFlex tools available.

Classify For Windows

A set of classes with the same class names allows you to have one set of source code for GUI or character mode applications. All you need to do is recompile using the Windows classes and you have a FULL Windows graphical application today!

More to come...

Calvin Consultancy is working on a series of add-on products for Classify, to further simplify application development and documentation.

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Where to get these GREAT tools:

emory@emory.com

Calvin Consultancy USA, Inc.
Ft Lauderdale, Florida USA
(954) 236-5440 voice
(954) 236-5333 fax

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