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A GUI for Multivalue Development

Developed by Nerds for Fellow Nerd Developers

Sierra Bravo created its own Integrated Development Environment with a graphical interface for browsing, building, and compiling PickBASIC code.

Business situation Sierra Bravo develops modern front ends for MultiValue business systems. There is a wide variety of programming skills in the development staff. PICK programmers, PHP programmers, .NET programmers, and Java programmers all are familiar with different tool sets for doing their job. Sierra Bravo created a development guide to the special tools used to facilitate easier program interaction across development environments.

Technical Situation

Developing programs in PICK on MultiValue databases requires use of a command line editor (ed or vi). To open/edit/view programs the developer must be capable of navigating the MultiValue system. In order to give the web and windows programmers an easier method of working with the PICK programs, a modern development environment needed.

Solution

In order to give developers a user-friendly environment to work with PICK programs, Sierra Bravo decided to utilize the eclipse development platform. A set of plug-ins have been developed for eclipse that will allow the user to open/add/edit/compile PICK programs.

Windows Installer

In order to make set-up and getting in PICK development easy, a Windows installer was put together for the PICK Eclipse IDE. A single executable is available for download. When launched, the executable allows the user to setup the development environment by clicking through a series of installation screens similar to any other Windows setup program. Like any other Windows program, the installation will create a shortcut in the start menu.

Intuitive User Interface

When the application launches, it opens to an intuitive user interface. The menu, the console, and the editor are the three main components to the development environment. By default, the menu and the console are open. The menu view lists the accounts that are configured in the IDE. Each account appears as a folder. Double-clicking the account folder icon will open the account folder to show all the files in that account. PICK files appears as folders in the tree view as well. Double-clicking the file icon will display all the items in the file. Each item contains one program. Double-clicking the item icon will open the editor. Right-clicking the item will display a context menu with the options to open, or compile the file. Every action that is taking place during this navigation is interacting with the PICK database. The interaction is logged in the console.

Compiling Programs

There user can either use the context menu or a key combination to compile programs. Right-clicking a program in the item list and clicking the compile option will trigger the compile on the PICK system. There is configuration settings for each file on the system to denote the compile verb to use in the business system or whether or not the program should be flash compiled. If a program is open in the editor a key combination (CTRL+B) will trigger the save and compile function for the active file.

Opening Subroutines

Some users have requested an easy method to open subroutines that are referenced in the editor. A context menu option is available by right clicking in the editor. If a subroutine name is selected, clicking the menu option will find the subroutine and open it in the editor.

Simple Configuration

In order to keep the configuration of the PICK Eclipse IDE simple, a preference plug-in was developed that would work in the standard eclipse preferences dialog. Clicking the Window > Preferences menu pops up the standard eclipse preferences dialog. The PICK IDE has a preference group in the main tree. The user can configure the editor colors and the servers available from the two preference applets.

DEVTOOLS Pick Account

To access the programs on the MultiValue database the BravoConnector and development tools must be installed. Development tools are installed in an isolated account on the PICK system. This account has all the programs necessary for interacting with the PICK IDE.

Benefits

By making available the PICK programs to all the developers through an easy-to-use interface Sierra Bravo is able to encourage cross functionality. The barriers of learning PICK’s command line interface are removed.

Products and Services Used:

  • Eclipse framework
  • DEVTOOLS XML Web services
  • Bravo Connector
  • Java 5.0

Services Provided by Other Groups or Companies:

IBM and the Eclipse Foundation provided us with Eclipse.

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