Presenting on Oracle Open 96 / Guidelines/2000

GUIDELINES/2000

Many organizations using Oracle products are making the move to Designer/2000 and
Developer/2000 tools. This move confronts these organizations with a totally new
development environment in which matters like GUI design and Application Partitioning play significant roles. They are thus forced to reconsider the standards,
procedures and tools in use.

With these problems in mind Decade Financial Software has developed the Guidelines/
2000 product. Guidelines/2000 lets you develop high quality systems in a standardized
manner. With this product, Decade Financial Software offers a full complement of
standards, generators, templates and test tools specially developed for the

Designer/2000 and Developer/2000 environments. Obviously, Guidelines/2000 is fully
integrated with the Designer/2000 and Developer/2000 environments. Guidelines/2000 product range

Guidelines/ 2000 not only offers the tools to build high quality systems, it also offers
the standards that will allow you to put these tools to effective use. The tools comprise
generators, templates and test tools.

Standards/2000

Standards/ 2000 consists of four documents that present highly detailed descriptions of
the conventions to be used to describe data for the Designer/2000 Repository and the
manner in which the various Developer/2000 tools are to be employed. Each guideline
presents many lucid examples. All standards have been described in detail and have
been provided with a label. Reference to these labels permits quality assurance checks
of the applications for the standards to be used.

Generators/2000

The Windows Help Generator and Server Side Code Generator are geared for a fully
automated generation of on-line help functions and PL/SQL code for the business
rules.

WINDOWS HELP GENERATOR

The Windows Help Generator can be used to generate a comprehensive on-line help
application using the descriptions recorded in Designer/2000 of, for example, the data
model, the function hierarchy, the business rules, the business units and the module
network. Hyperlinks are used to structure these on-line help applications. With this
capability user documentation can be generated as an integral subproduct through all
phases of the development process. As a result, the maintenance of user documentation also becomes an integral part of the maintenance of the functional
specifications for the automated system.

SERVER SIDE CODE GENERATOR

The Server Side Code Generator permits automatic generation of most of the PL/SQL
code for the implementation of the business rules (constraints), defined using
Designer/2000. The structure of the generated code is based on packages, stored
procedures and functions. The required database triggers needed to activate the
various procedures and functions and to handle any error situations can also be
generated using a defined event model. Experience shows that generation of at least
75% of all business rules is attainable. Clearly, a highly controlled situation can be
achieved here as well, especially for the maintenance of the PL/SQL code in question.
Maintenance of PL/SQL code is thus ‘transferred’ to the realm of the maintenance of
functional specifications.

Templates/2000

A number of Oracle Forms Templates and Oracle Reports Templates have been made
available to help generate the user interface. For example, Oracle Forms Templates can
be used to generate dialogs fully in line with The Windows Interface Guidelines for
Software Design from Microsoft. An example of these are the Property Sheets based
on The Chicago Style Tabs. Users will readily recognize the generated dialogs and use
them in the same manner as for the other applications in the Windows 3.11, Windows
NT and Windows 95 desktop environments that they are familiar with.

The templates can easily be adapted to, for example, the house style of an organization
and therefore offer great flexibility during the construction phase of a development
process.

Test Suite/2000

Test Suite/ 2000 is an environment in which detailed and exhaustive test cases can be
defined, executed and evaluated using Test Scenarios. The total integration with the
Designer/ 2000 Repository allows for the automatic generation of SQL statements for,
amongst other things, adding, changing and deleting of table data. It is possible to
reuse detailed Test Scenarios in any other Test Scenario, which permits the

construction of Test Scenarios using previously defined and tested Test Scenarios.

For each Test Scenario, the expected results can also be recorded. This makes it
possible to evaluate the results of a Test Scenario immediately after its execution and
determine whether or not a certain stored procedure, stored function or database
trigger meets the specifications set.

System requirements

The Guidelines/ 2000 products are integrated in the Oracle Designer/2000 environment. The products operate in any environment set up for the use of Designer/2000 and can be started directly in a Windows 3.11, Windows NT or Windows 95 environment. The Oracle RDBMS can be used in a host of different

environments (Windows NT, UNIX, VMS, OS/2, NetWare and others).

Practical example of the use of Guidelines/2000

Decade Financial Software used Guidelines/2000 products to develop the financial
system Decade Financials. While developing Decade Financials, a data model of about
500 entities, a function hierarchy of close to 1000 business functions, more than 5000
elementary business rules and an event model of approximately 1500 events were
defined to become part of the Designer/2000 Repository. Within a year a fully eventdriven
 system was delivered that made use of the Windows 95/NT Style Guides and
the Client/Server concept and in which all business rules and integrity rules are
monitored by the RDBMS. A comprehensive Windows help on-line user manual is also
part of the system.

Of the approximately 5000 business rules, about 4000 constraints were implemented
using the Server Side Code Generator. More than 75% of the almost 300 dialogs and
between 80% and 95% of the near 50 standard reports were completely generated with
the aid of Templates/2000. The on-line user manual could simply be generated with the
press of a button. The testing process was supported by Test Suite/2000. In applying
this test environment, Test Scenarios were defined for all server side PL/SQL code and
all test sets could be executed a number of times.

Implementation

To implement Guidelines/2000, Decade Financial Software is able to provide highly
trained specialists. These specialists can train your employees in the application of
Guidelines/2000 and can guide the implementation in your organization. The training
and implementation program will be defined in close consultation with you and will
focus on the needs of your organization.

Rob Zoeteweij
Decade Financial Software B.V.
Rob.Zoeteweij_at_inter.nl.net

LOOKING FOR DEALERS!!!!! Received on Sun Sep 29 1996 - 00:00:00 CEST