Re: Multiple Displays vs One Display

Hi Scott,

Way back when I first started working on the Sys3 Mod15D they had CCP (I think it was Communications Control Program), and there were two recommendations - SRT and MRT programs. The idea SRT (Single Requesting Terminal?) was for the program to quickly display a screen that contained the name of the next program that would process that screen embedded as a hidden field. When the user pressed Enter, the system would use that hidden name to call the program and let it process the screen. This meant that while the user was filling in the screen fields, there was no program taking up any of the 32KB or whatever memory the machine had. It also meant that programs were small, so that when they were in memory, there was room for other programs.

An MRT (Multiple Requesting Terminals?) program was designed to handle several users at once. It had to keep track of the data for each requester and respond appropriately when it received a request from that user's terminal.

I think of the SRT model a lot when looking at browser-based programs...

*Peter Dow* /
Dow Software Services, Inc.
909 793-9050
pdow@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:pdow@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> /

Scott Klement wrote:

This is an interesting thread. I've never hard of this "one screen / one module" recommendation before. I'm having a hard time understanding why you'd do this...

All of the recommendations I've seen involve separating the display logic from the business logic -- usually using an MVC pattern. I've never heard of separating the display logic from other display logic. I don't understand the advantages of separating each screen from the other ones.

Can you please provide links to where you saw these recommendations? Preferably, a link to an article that really explains the premise of this technique?

Thanks


Wilt, Charles wrote:

Now-a-days, I think most the experts recommend one screen per
module/program. While not an expert, that's what I'd recommend also
:)

Tends to lead to more modular programming. Maintenance is easier as
you don't have to worry about accidentally changing another screens
behavior.

Also makes it easy to call a particular screen from someplace else.