Ten Habits Of Highly- Effective Modern ABL Programmers

66 Pages·2014·0.67 MB·English

by  Peter Judge

Ten Habits Of Highly-
Effective Modern ABL
Programmers
Even Covey Only Has 7!
10ish Years‘ Worth of Progress
10.0A 10.2B 11.0
10.0B
9.1E
11.1
10.1A
10.1B 11.2
11.3
10.1C
10.2A

2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
9.1E04 released in Apr ‗06 10.2B08 released in Dec ‗13
11.3.1 released in Feb ‗14
3 © 2013 Progress Software Corporation. All rights reserved.
10ish Years‘ Worth of Progress, put another way
message digests 64-bit dbkeys
OOABL abstract classes REST and Mobile
Indeterminate arrays
encryption
XML xref OOABL reflection updates block-level undo, throw
base64-encoding Extend longchar support Dynamic DLL/SO invocation
ABL single-run
OOABL strongly typed events ProDataSet WRITE JSON
Log-manager "4glTrans‖ dynamic access to built-ins
ProDataSets STOP-AFTER
State-free AppServer Browser column view-as
Array parameters Browser sort arrows Multi-tenancy
BLOB Table-scan
Colour inheritance in GUI
CLOB JSON built-in objects
OOABL overloading
DateTime Temp-table VSTs
.NET openclient Auditing ProDataSet infer relations from XML
WebServices-out Client-Principal Remove IO blocking from function
mergeprop Sax-writer Structured error handling OOABL interface inheritance
TTY mode dynamic browse widget
By-reference parameters Fix 64-bit r-code
Stream handle
Events in batch mode GUI for .NET everywhere
GUI for .NET
OOABL dynamic property accessors
OOABL
OOABL static members
OpenClient dynamic API OOABL garbage collection
ProDataSet read/write xml OOABL interface properties
Webservices-out w/temp-tables/PDS OOABL array support password encoding
XML read/write enhancements
parameter defined as LIKE
ProDataSet WHERE-STRING
2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
4 © 2013 Progress Software Corporation. All rights reserved.
In No Particular Order
1. ProDataSets
2. Passing data by-reference
3. mtime > etime (DATETIME)
4. Indeterminate Arrays
5. Arrays as arguments
6. OOABL: taking the leap from spaghetti code to lasagna code
7. Structured error handling
8. Includes & preprocessors
9. JsonObject
10. Static is dynamic is static
5 © 2013 Progress Software Corporation. All rights reserved.
In No Particular Order
1. ProDataSets
2. Passing data by-reference
This is *my* list. If you
3. mtime > etime (DATETIME)
don‘t like it, feel free to
4. Indeterminate Arrays
5. Arrays as arguments
shout your own at
6. OOABL: taking the leap from spaghetti code to lasagna code
disagree with
7. Structured error handling
8. Includes & preprocessors me
9. JsonObject
10. Static is dynamic is static
6 © 2013 Progress Software Corporation. All rights reserved.
ProDataSets Age: Prime of life
 FILL() and related events
 Data sources with multi-table field mapping
• 2 db tables into 1 temp-table? Field names human-readable? No problem
 Parent-child relationships
• UI binding goodness (navigate through parents, get child nav free!)
 Change tracking
 Row-level events
 Multiple representations
• Native ABL
• JSON and XML serialization
• OpenClient, BPM, JavaScript versions (aka JSDO)
 Gotcha: fair amount of work to do on save (lots of control)

7 © 2013 Progress Software Corporation. All rights reserved.
ProDataSets - defining
define temp-table ttCustomer no-undo before-table btCustomer
field Number as integer
field Name as character /* name matches db */
field CreditLimit as decimal /* name matches db */
field Balance as decimal /* name matches db */
field FullAddress as character
field NumOpenOrders as integer /* name matches db */
index idx1 as primary unique Number.
define temp-table ttOrder no-undo before-table btOrder /* etc */

define dataset dsCustomer for ttCustomer, ttOrder
data-relation relCustOrd for ttCustomer, ttOrder
relation-fields(Number, Number).
define data-source srcCustomer for Sports2000.Customer.
8 © 2013 Progress Software Corporation. All rights reserved.
ProDataSets – fetching data
/* define temp-table, dataset, data-source as above */
define input parameter pcWhereClause as character no-undo.
define output parameter dataset for dsCustomer.

buffer ttCustomer:attach-data-source(data-source srcCustomer:handle).
data-source srcCustomer:fill-where-string = pcWhereClause.

dataset dsCustomer:fill().

buffer ttCustomer:detach-data-source().
9 © 2013 Progress Software Corporation. All rights reserved.
ProDataSets - defining
define temp-table ttCustomer no-undo before-table btCustomer
field Number as integer
field Name as character /* name matches db */
field CreditLimit as decimal /* name matches db */
field Balance as decimal /* name matches db */
field FullAddress as character
field NumOpenOrders as integer /* name matches db */
index idx1 as primary unique Number.
define temp-table ttOrder no-undo before-table btOrder /* etc */

define dataset dsCustomer for ttCustomer, ttOrder
data-relation relCustOrd for ttCustomer, ttOrder
relation-fields(Number, Number).
define data-source srcCustomer for Sports2000.Customer.
10 © 2013 Progress Software Corporation. All rights reserved.
ProDataSets – fetching data (2)
/* define temp-table, dataset, data-source as above */
define input parameter pcWhereClause as character no-undo.
define output parameter dataset for dsCustomer.

buffer ttCustomer:attach-data-source(
data-source srcCustomer:handle, 'CustNum,Number').
data-source srcCustomer:fill-where-string = pcWhereClause.

dataset dsCustomer:fill().

buffer ttCustomer:detach-data-source().
11 © 2013 Progress Software Corporation. All rights reserved.