Thursday, June 29, 2006

Visual LANSA WAM Weblets

LANSA WAMs productivity increases when a developer takes existing XSL Web Page Weblets that are shipped with the Visual LANSA IDE and copy these Weblets to make custom components. A Weblet can be a number of objects. A few examples include Checkbox, Drop Down, Clickable Images, Tab Pages, Tabs, etc. The power is really increased when the Weblets are linked as a visualization to a database field. The concept of storing the visualization with the field supports centralizing your inventory of components. When the field level components are used in one or more database files, the Weblet and all the field characteristics are available to the file and any functions the field is used in without further modifications.

Visual LANSA also uses wizards in which they call application templates. These wizards will generate completed web pages that allow developers to perform business/application activities. You can copy shipped wizards or create new wizards for your specific application. When you as a developer combine the power of the wizard with the custom Weblet functionality, your development productivity increases dramatically over traditional methods.

As an example, a developer can run a wizard to create a particular function, the wizard creates the application code, screen layouts, presentation layer, screen visualizations, business logic, validation rules, error routines, etc. and the developer has not written any code!

Additional comments are welcome from other LANSA Developers.

Monday, June 05, 2006

RAMP Movie

Click here to see a good overview of RAMP. It is a short presentation of the basic concepts of RAMP and how it can help you modernize your 5250 green screen applications and extend those applications with new technology. It's worth the time to take a look.