Uniface development tool

I have seen new versions of languages being released without any investigation being done on the availability of new and better features. I have seen things done in an inefficient way simply because "we have always done it this way".

In a previous article entitled Development Standards - Limitation or Inspiration? I identified some of the obstacles to good programming that I have encountered in my long career. Among these are:. You would not believe that aspects of database design could possibly have an impact on the development process, but I have encountered several circumstances where this has actually been the case.

One of these areas is the use of technical primary keys, sometimes known as surrogate keys. It is recognised that when choosing a primary key for a database table it is sometimes necessary to add an extra item just for this purpose, something which has no meaning to the user. This is just in case the first idea for a primary key contains data that can actually change over time. What is not recognised, however, is that while surrogate keys may be advantageous in some circumstances there are other circumstances where their use not only gives no advantage but in some cases can actually be a disadvantage.

In my humble opinion there are two ways of using surrogate keys - intelligently and indiscriminately. Another example of poor database design which I have encountered more than once is dealing with a history file where an object can have a different set of values depending on the date.

I have seen cases where the start date is built into the primary key and cannot be changed, and I have seen cases where several database procedures had to be invoked in order to extract the relevant data for a particular date. When I query these people on their inefficient design I hear the same old reply "but we've always done it this way!

I have often come across cases where an application uses a series of control parameters which are stored in the database, and I am still amazed that designers use a single record to hold all these parameter values. In case you are not aware this may present problems in the following areas:.

When I first encountered these problems many years ago I immediately sat down and tried to devise a more flexible solution which avoided these problems. The results have been documented in A flexible method of storing control data. When I point out my design to other people a typical response is "we don't have time to work out fancy designs like that", but what they are actually saying is that they just don't have the ability to find a better solution.

Another area which often presents difficulties to the inexperienced is when dealing with many-to-many relationships. Why these people still tie themselves up in knots while trying to find the optimum solution still beats me. The solution which I encountered years ago is documented in How to deal with Many-to-Many Relationships , and I have yet to see a better one.

I am still amazed when I see applications being designed with a small number of large components instead of a large number of small components. Some people seem to think that it is the number of components which defines the size and therefore the budget for a system, whereas in actual fact it is the number of complex components which is the significant factor. I discovered a long time ago that by breaking down a large component into smaller units that I could develop all the small units faster than I could develop the complex whole.

I also discovered that these smaller units were much easier to design, much easier to specify, much easier to maintain and much easier to document. My experiences have been documented in Component Design - Large and Complex vs. Small and Simple. One of the most under-used and under-rated features of UNIFACE is the ability to build components from pre-defined component templates. Unfortunately when UNIFACE 7 was released Compuware did not provide any reasonable working examples so most developers failed to spot the benefits that could be gained by using them.

Anybody who has developed a large number of components will soon come across the scenario where they need a new component that looks and feels like an existing component, but with different data. In this situation it is possible to save time by copying the existing component and modifying it for the new data than it is to write the new component from scratch.

I have encountered a lot of developers who are familiar with this situation, but I have never encountered any who have implemented a solution that is anywhere near as useful as mine. The simple steps that I took were as follows:.

To give you an idea of the savings that can be made from using component templates in I designed and built a prototype system from scratch that contained 19 tables, 18 relationships and 50 components in 5 weeks.

Not only did it take less time to build each component, it also took less time to test each component as the code which was inherited from the template had already been tested and debugged. Another saving that can be made with component templates which I have never seen anybody else use is to do with changes after components have been built.

It is not possible to change the structure of a template and have that changed structure automatically inherited by any associated components after a component has been built, nor is it possible to inherit any changes to entity or field triggers. The only changes that can be inherited are the contents of component triggers, so I have deliberately built all my templates with as much generic code as possible defined in component triggers. By taking advantage of this feature I have been able to make changes in the generic code of a template and have those changes incorporated into every associated component simply by recompiling them.

This is much faster than the old fashioned method of duplicating each change in every component. When I tell people that I have 50 component templates in my library they laugh and tell me that they only need 5. I have tried working with their 5 templates and I can safely say that they are sadly mistaken.

Creating a component from a primitive template and then having to insert all that extra code to make the component actually work is almost as much effort as building the component from scratch without the use of a template in the first place.

One team of developers I talked to actually found their templates so laborious that they preferred not to use them - instead they copied an existing component which already contained the necessary code and changed it to deal with the different entities and fields.

They have not learned to use these features the way they were meant to be used, they are not achieving the productivity levels with their 5 templates that I can achieve with my 50, yet they persist in laughing at my efforts. I think the joke is on them. For a more detailed look at the features of component templates take a look at The Power of Component Templates. People who have been around UNIFACE for a long time will know that it was originally developed around the 2-Tier architecture but has recently been updated to provide features that facilitate the use of the 3-Tier architecture.

It was not until XML streams appeared in 7. If you want a brief explanation on the 3-Tier architecture take a look at The 3-Tier Architecture - is it hardware or software? I have seen several attempts at implementing the 3-Tier architecture in UNIFACE and each time I had to ask what medication these people were taking because it was quite clearly affecting their ability to design workable and efficient solutions. In the first case the system designers not only insisted on a 3-Tier architecture, they also insisted that it use a separate application model for the presentation layer.

On top of that they also wanted it to behave in a more Object Oriented way. Well, sorry, it's the law. We measure how many people read us, and ensure you see relevant ads, by storing cookies on your device.

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They allow us to count visits and traffic sources so that we can measure and improve the performance of our sites. If people say no to these cookies, we do not know how many people have visited and we cannot monitor performance. Compuware aims to be one of the first out of the blocks with full Microsoft Vista support for its Uniface development tool.

Announced this week, Uniface 9. We have to make sure we support the major platforms as they come to market. We will have Vista support available soon after the launch to end users at the end of January," says Ton Blunkers, product manager for Uniface at Compuware. Uniface sits at the heart of Compuware's developer portfolio and can link to a range of other tools including Uniface Flow, a business process modelling tool, and Uniface View, a web-based application tool. It also has links to Compuware's Changepoint application portfolio management package and its recently-acquired requirements planning product OptimalTrace formerly SteelTrace.

Blunkers says one of the key roles for Uniface 9. Blunkers says Compuware is in the process of building support for the AJAX technology so Uniface can create so-called Rich Internet Applications and thin-client applications for mobile devices. Uniface was first developed for DEC VMS computers in the s and has remained a popular development tool with a loyal user base ever since. Some companies will go to great lengths to hide business expansion plans, but it appears AWS may have namechecked a defunct UK business in efforts to conceal a planning application for a new data centre.

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