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For Developers with Dictionary-IV Experience

If you are experienced with Thoroughbred Dictionary-IV, you will already be familiar with many of the classes that OPENworkshop provides. Be prepared, however, to revise the way you think about these classes and the way you use them to build a system.

OPENworkshop is an object-oriented development environment. It features new concepts that dramatically change the way developers build business software. It also allows developers to retain their past investments in software based on Thoroughbred programming environments.

OPENworkshop operates under Dictionary-IV. It uses links, formats, views, screens, and other Dictionary-IV features to define and control its operation. It supports Report-IV and Query-IV reports and queries. While OPENworkshop implements extensions to Dictionary-IV that support Object Technology concepts, it continues to work with those previously defined classes.

OPENworkshop is supported by the Script-IV and Thoroughbred Basic programming languages. Much existing code can be retained when an application is transformed into the OPENworkshop environment. The most surprising difference is the amount of code that can be thrown away because it is no longer needed.

OPENworkshop extends the capabilities of Dictionary-IV and adds some new directives to Script-IV. Most existing applications can be adapted to work in OPENworkshop, but some changes will be required.

OPENworkshop offers the benefits of reduced development and maintenance costs, even compared with Dictionary-IV based development. It also offers a much more flexible user interface. Some further benefits include:

  • Pass control anywhere at any time

    Dictionary-IV provides a hotkey facility that provides access to screens, views, reports, queries, and menus. This facility is greatly enhanced in OPENworkshop by a CONNECT method-type capability. You can provide access to any method from anywhere in the system.

  • Re-entrance

    The new structure based on objects and methods, (as opposed to programs and data), has significant implications in the area of re-entrance. It removes most barriers and also takes responsibility for management of the run-time context away from the developer. An OPENworkshop application can allow users to create a new invoice while they are processing an existing invoice. The developer has to take no special action.

  • Interactive debugger

    A powerful interactive debugger is provided, together with a global dictionary map and many where-used views that show where data element names are defined and referenced.

  • Structured help

    The help system has been extended to allow help to be grouped and categorized, and accessed through a Help Topics subsystem.

From the OPENworkshop Reference, version 8.9.1. Open this page in the PDF