The BuildingBlocks4GL Fourth Generation Language Rapid Application Development Tools (BB4GL/RAD)

Fourth Generation Environment

Racine Enterprises Inc has developed its own 4GL Rapid Application Development Tools which it has successfully used to develop Purveyor. These "Building Blocks" make creating a new application, or upgrading an old one, practically "Child's Play!". These are a set of utilities which both help comprise and support the application as a whole with the general purpose of providing a standard Graphical User Interface (mouse and arrow support), AccuTerm Integration, portable account saves and restores, easy to use and customize menus, sophisticated field editing routines, enhanced, standardized lookup methods, a tight, intuitive security system, and a whole host of utilities geared towards spooler management, report library management and use, file management and usage (including sophisticated Export, Transform, and Load (ETL) processes, useful for efficient Data Warehousing), on-line documentation, and much more. To get the most out of the BB4GL, one should be running AccuTerm. The BB4GL has previously been marketed by Racine Enterprises Inc.'s owner, in earlier, more primitive forms, as the "Practical 4GL" and the "Programmer's Friend Utilities".

The BB4GL is a set of powerful Rapid Application Development (RAD) tools which REI designed and developed independently to accelerate the development of the REI Purveyor Software application and to offer as a separate product, apart from Purveyor, as well. While we did develop these independently, we did so from our experience with other systems and pulled heavily from best practices there.

Programs are available in either and/or both Smart User Interface (SUI) and Graphical User Interface (GUI) screen formats. The Smart User Interface is a high-performance, simplified graphical user interface designed to support companies whose transaction processing requirements are high. It is attractive, easy-to-use, and often employs common Graphical User Interface features such as mouse usage, arrow key support, tab and back-tab, activation of commands by entering single characters, cursor-controlled editing, colors, sizable screens, and, soon to come, wallpaper (background images). The Graphical User Interface, by contrast, is more geared toward the users who have less need for transaction processing speed. It provides an interface which is more like that of Microsoft Windows. While it runs as quickly as that of Microsoft Windows, it runs many times more slowly than the Smart User Interface. All screens available in GUI are also available in SUI. The reverse cannot be said, though we are making more screens also available in GUI format as time goes on. We recommend that you try both for those which have both available. There are system switches which control which type of screen is used for which application. While the GUI may be initially more familiar, you may decide to use the SUI screens because they can get you finished your work more quickly.

The Application Sets are:

• AccessPro Report Writer and TCL Stacker
• AccuPro AccuSoft and MS Office Integration
• CursorPro GUI Editing
• Database Integrity Package (UPD & BQL Screen Generators and ICV/OCV)
• E GUI/line editor (emulates and extends ED)
• FreedomProgramming Database Independence
• FreedomSaves Portable Account Save and Restore Programs
• GoodByeProc Proc to Basic Conversion
• GrabBag Miscellaneous Utilities
• MasterLookups Sophisticated Customer, Vendor, and Product ID Retrieval Modules
• MoveIt Extract, Transform, and Load Utilities
• MultiMenus Sophisticated Menu Module
• PowerTools Database Maintenance Utilities
• QuickScreens Advanced Terminal and Terminal Emulation Screen Re-painting
• SafetyNet Application Security System
• SpoolerPro Complete Spooler Menus
• SupportPro Help and Support Communication Module

Outside Vendor Utilities and Applications which we use

• AccuTerm from AccuSoft Enterprises extremely precise Terminal Emulation, Graphical User Interface extensions, File Transfer, and Remote Internet Access to Purveyor
  
• MicroSoft office, especially MS Access, MS Excel, MS Outlook, and MS Word. NotePad and WordPad are also employed.
• MicroSoft Windows Operating System and AIX. Other versions of Unix as well as Lynux can be used, after some modification and reconfiguration, using other MultiValue vendors.
• Utilities built into mvBase, QM, D3, mvEnterprise, UniVerse, UniData and other Pick/MultiValue Databases/Operating Environments, including Basic Compiler and its Options, Proc, Runoff, Pick Access, TCL, ERRMSG, Forms Generation, Tandem Phantom Processing, Telnet, Remote File Access and Database Networking, excellent Security, and back-end File-Sizing.
• Adobe Acrobat to generate PDFs for my websites and Adobe FrameMaker to maintain my Purveyor User Manual
• PhotoImpression for simple image editing
• DreamWeaver for HTML to maintain our websites
• Application Software (and source code) as a starter from two foods distributors (Honor Foods and J.G. Haldeman & Bro,). I must emphasize, however, that these comprise less than 25% of the present Purveyor application and even that 25% has been heavily modified and enhanced. That original software was stable and valuable as far as it went, though, and held promise, so we developed on top of, through it, and around it. We fully acknowledge the work and intelligence that went in to the early roots of this software from these fine companies, with whom we had and have full cooperation and support for our efforts.
• Skype to keep down telephone costs
• SmartFTP for file transfers to my web-host
• Internet Explorer, Firefox, and NetScape for Internet Browsing and HTML testing
• Norton Utilities for Virus Protection, Anti-Spam, Disk Optimization, and Registry Management
• DynDNS for Dynamic IP Addressing to support my Website Demo Links which jump directly into my database.
• Verizon DSL for Internet Access