Automated application programming environment

With the availability of high-performance, low-cost hardware, APL provides a cost-effective means of developing custom software for the small business environment, and perhaps the best alternative to trying to adapt to an off-the-shelf package. Since APL does not inherently deal with system specific screen manipulation and file management techniques, programming these interface requirements from APL is typically tedious, potentially reducing the attractiveness of APL as the development language. Strategies for dealing with the realities of screen and file management in the context of small business systems are discussed in this paper. Low level functions with universal application are described along with code generation utilities to automatically produce the user and file interfaces for application packages. The programmer makes use of the screen and file management utilities to specify screen I/O and file management requirements resulting in a set of automatically generated screen and file functions for use with the application program. Thus, the programmer is relieved of the tedious task of dealing with the programming of the user and file interfaces and can concentrate on the “core” of the application program. Furthermore, system specific code in the application program (for displays and files) minimally affects portability since the utilities confine such code to a handful of low level functions. A working example of a small business system constructed with the assistance of screen and file management utilities is discussed.