Re: AS/Set & 4GL curiosity

Most people would not really recognise AS/SET as a 4GL. Technically it has the
potential to be used as an extremely flexible 4GL but actually in practice it is
more of a code generator. The big deal with going to AS/SET for SSA was the
dream that with one common AS/SET code base they could generate both RPG and C
code from the same "Action Diagrams". That way they would continue to compile
RPG on the AS400 and would be able to compile C on Unix. Because of the
necessity of going to SQL for Unix, a lot of the truly fancy '4GL' like
abilities tied to data models, tends not to be used. The AS/SET most customers
have available right now generates green screen only. "Real Soon Now" the
ability to do full client service work will be available, but good luck getting
it today.

Most shops still have to work in green screen AS/SET generating green screen
programs.


<Can AS/Set be used by a green screen programmer and/or GUI programmer?  Can
code in AS/Set
be told to generate to run on green screen and/or GUI?>

Green screen exists as an answer to both these questions, GUI has been promised
for both.

<Do the green screen & GUI versions have to have different names, or does the
compiled code automatically react to the connected devices like LANSA
recognizes what the AS/400 data stream is connected to & picks the right
interface?> No automatic reaction. Green screen and GUI run in different
environments.

<Can AS/Set support a mixture of some code comes from AS/Set & some code is
native 3GL?> Yes, no problem at all.

<we would find that different 4GL don't talk to each other real good.  Is that a
fair bet?> Yes, however some 4GL's do have the ability to call standard 3GL
programs, AS/SET of course generates 3GL code complete with RPG Calls and
slightly limited ability to execute CL commands within your progam.

Since AS/SET programs end up as normal 3GL programs, if a 4GL can talk to RPG
modules it can 'talk' to AS/SET

Harmon Zieske Nexgen


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