Progress
Language Tutorial
for Character
Progress Tools
In the tutorial, you learned just enough about the Procedure Editor and Data Dictionary to help you write procedures. These two basic tools have many more features that you’ll want to use. These tools are covered in the Progress Basic Development Tools on-line help manual.
In addition to the two basic tools, there are two more that you should be aware of: the AppBuilder and the the Debugger. Whether or not these tools are available to you depends on the specific package you purchased and your development environment. Here’s a quick summary of these tools and their documentation.
AppBuilder
The AppBuilder is a tool for graphical environments that allows you to draw an interface and the AppBuilder codes the interface for you. Of course, this is only the beginning of what the AppBuilder can do. The tool takes full advantage of the graphical features of a GUI to make creating Progress applications easier. The tool includes a section editor where you can write code, including triggers.
The AppBuilder includes an implementation of encapsulated objects called SmartObjects. These contain a variety of objects that you can combine to quickly build graphical applications. When you use SmartObjects to build your application, you create an easily maintainable body of code based on reusable objects. You can change a SmartObject and affect that change for every instance of that SmartObject.
If you program in a graphical environment, the AppBuilder could easily become the hub of your development environment. However, keep in mind that the AppBuilder can also be used to design character environments, and that SmartObjects can be used in character environments. For an introduction to the the AppBuilder and to SmartObjects, see the Progress Application Development Environment — Getting Started manual. For an in-depth treatment of the AppBuilder, see the Progress AppBuilder Developer’s Guide . For information on porting Progress applications, especially those containing SmartObjects, between Windows and character interfaces, see the Progress Portability Guide .
Debugger
When your application grows and consists of many procedure files, debugging may take up more of your time. The Progress Debugger can reduce that burden. The Debugger is documented in the Progress Debugger Guide .
Other Tools
Progress has a number of other tools that serve very specific purposes. If you need to use one of these tools, the Progress documentation set will point you towards it.
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