Release 10.1A: OpenEdge Development:
Progress 4GL Handbook

Examining the Code the AppBuilder Generates

In the previous chapter you didn’t write much code, but rather let the AppBuilder do it for you. This might seem inappropriate in a book about how to learn to program in the Progress 4GL, but there’s a reason for this approach. You need to be familiar with the syntax the AppBuilder generates for you when you put together a window in this way, but you needn’t get into the habit of writing much code like this yourself. The tools are there to do this for you, and you should take advantage of them.

Having said that, in this chapter you’ll look at more of the code the AppBuilder generated for your window, so that you understand how it works. By doing this, you can learn some new 4GL statements used to define visual objects and database queries. But then this chapter explains some of the ways in which this won’t be typical of the complete applications you write. As you progress through the book, you’ll learn about how the OpenEdge development tools can help you create applications where there is no compiled 4GL code for the user interface at all! But to work in that mode, you’ll need to learn a little more about dynamic programming in Progress.

This chapter provides a grounding in the static definitions that are the starting point for the more dynamic object definitions you’ll use in later chapters, as described in the following sections:

Viewing the entire sample procedure code
Contrasting procedural and event-driven programs
Looking ahead