RE: UIM

Colin,

Yes, you are missing something really cool. <vbg>  Basically, to develop a
user interface (display station screen format) you have four options,
depending on your needs and abilities. Personally, I have only really dealt
with DDS, but I like trying to  learn the others too. I may not have
everything completely correct, but I'm sure others will correct me if I
stray.

First is standard DDS DSPF, which most of us use for interactive apps. This
method provides a great deal of flexibility in screen design and layout, as
you define every field and its placement on the screen. You must decide on
the operational characteristics of the fields and build in validation and
error handling.

Second possibility is UIM (User Interface Manager) which is what IBM uses
for most of its utilities and menus. Because layout is controlled by UIM,
all applications using this interface end up with similar look and feel. UIM
supports subfiles and performs all management tasks needed for multi-page
screens. UIM directly supports multi-view panels (like wrkactjob F11). I
sort of think of it like a macro language. UIM supports field validation and
error handling for you.

Third comes the DSM api's, Dynamic Screen Manager. These api's give
low-level access to the 5250 datastream and are very powerful. You'd use
these to overcome limitations with DDS, and to enable 5250 features that are
not normally available via DDS. 

Our final option is UDDS, which is really just a combination of 1 and 3. It
was a means to enable advanced 5250 options that were not directly supported
by DDS. Again, this is very low-level stuff, and as such its not for the
faint of heart. 

In my opinion, UIM offers a great deal of benefit in reusability, as the
code can be very modular. I feel this could be of great advantage in ILE
apps, though I'm only now starting to think my way through it. I feel UIM
provides a very consistent screen/report layout and offers many powerful
display management features. It deserves a closer look.

hth,
Eric DeLong 

-----Original Message-----
From: Colin Thorpe [mailto:Colin@IBS-PUBLIC-SERVICES.CO.UK]
Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2001 8:18 AM
To: RPG400-L@midrange.com
Subject: UIM


Hi all,

I've been following the thread on UIM, but I have no idea what it is or what
it does......
Am I missing something really cool?

Would it be possible for someone to post an explanation to this.

Thanks in advance

Colin Thorpe


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