Another Story
Monday, July 17, 2006
Years ago I designed and implemented a windows client/server-based university registration system. The system was a bit complicated as the registration process required the student to do it personally, queue according a priority based on their grades and choose modules and timetables before all the limited places ran out. (It was like a race for places.) The system would also check online whether the student could take a module depending on the student having passed the pre-requisites. There were also millions of other controls which I can't remember now.
We used Centura Builder-former GUPTA- which used a so called object oriented language: SAL (Scalable Application Language) and IBM's DB2. Although we started using Oracle, someone decided to switch to DB2 instead when we were in the middle of the development! I'm not sure that that was a wise decision as Centura hadn't been been fully tested with DB2. It had inbuilt drivers for Oracle but not for DB2, so we had to use the generic ODBC drivers which didn't have the same performance (well only at the beginning because then the DBA managed to fix the problem). We also used Micro Focus Cobol (which also claimed to have object oriented features) for batch processes. I hated Cobol. Although it wasn't difficult, it was so old-fashioned. The functions that we really used (and really needed) were the basic standard Cobol as it was done in ancient times. Never used object oriented functions. We had to use an editor to type the code and then run a D.O.S. batch to compile the application. Also when we ran the program an awful D.O.S. command window will appear showing nothing! Centura Builder was a bit nicer. It had an attractive IDE, a coding assistant and would compile and run in secs. My problem with Centura though was the fallacy of object orientation. All analysts had taken a OMT course to learn how to design object oriented applications which, they said, could easily be converted into code. OMT would also help us to standardise our designs. Basically we learned to model business rules with UML. After the course I had an idea of what class, object, method, inheritance, message, encapsulation, polymorphism, class and sequence diagrams, etc., were. We would have classes like "student" and "academic record" and methods like "show available modules" and "register". However, when we tried to implement those classes in Centura we couldn't do it in a straight forward way. Centura worked with classes like form, table, list, combobox, etc. all of which were visual classes. There was a way to implement functional classes but it wasn't as friendlier as we would've liked. At the end we had to invent a solution so we could use both OMT and Centura together. We created funtional classes in Centura (containing business rules) which were invoked by visual classes (no business rules here) which in turn where the ones that the users interacted with. This could sound easy, but it wasn't a natural way to work with Centura. After a few months of trying to do this, almost everyone desisted. No one bothered to use UML and code the business rules in functional classes. People did what they thought was more productive: coded as the programming language and time allowed them. The same happened with Micro Focus Cobol. For us it wasn't compatible with UML.
Never again did we use UML to design applications...
hmmm maybe sometimes to show the big boss what we were doing.
Disclaimer: I know I am very outdated in technology possibly antedeluvian. I've been doing a "reading and writing thousands of words in MS Word" job for 4 years! Sometimes I would draw a diagram or two in Visio. I am so outdated I have forgotten how to setup my computer!!
BTW I finished my thesis. I still need to write an abstract and print it out though :/
We used Centura Builder-former GUPTA- which used a so called object oriented language: SAL (Scalable Application Language) and IBM's DB2. Although we started using Oracle, someone decided to switch to DB2 instead when we were in the middle of the development! I'm not sure that that was a wise decision as Centura hadn't been been fully tested with DB2. It had inbuilt drivers for Oracle but not for DB2, so we had to use the generic ODBC drivers which didn't have the same performance (well only at the beginning because then the DBA managed to fix the problem). We also used Micro Focus Cobol (which also claimed to have object oriented features) for batch processes. I hated Cobol. Although it wasn't difficult, it was so old-fashioned. The functions that we really used (and really needed) were the basic standard Cobol as it was done in ancient times. Never used object oriented functions. We had to use an editor to type the code and then run a D.O.S. batch to compile the application. Also when we ran the program an awful D.O.S. command window will appear showing nothing! Centura Builder was a bit nicer. It had an attractive IDE, a coding assistant and would compile and run in secs. My problem with Centura though was the fallacy of object orientation. All analysts had taken a OMT course to learn how to design object oriented applications which, they said, could easily be converted into code. OMT would also help us to standardise our designs. Basically we learned to model business rules with UML. After the course I had an idea of what class, object, method, inheritance, message, encapsulation, polymorphism, class and sequence diagrams, etc., were. We would have classes like "student" and "academic record" and methods like "show available modules" and "register". However, when we tried to implement those classes in Centura we couldn't do it in a straight forward way. Centura worked with classes like form, table, list, combobox, etc. all of which were visual classes. There was a way to implement functional classes but it wasn't as friendlier as we would've liked. At the end we had to invent a solution so we could use both OMT and Centura together. We created funtional classes in Centura (containing business rules) which were invoked by visual classes (no business rules here) which in turn where the ones that the users interacted with. This could sound easy, but it wasn't a natural way to work with Centura. After a few months of trying to do this, almost everyone desisted. No one bothered to use UML and code the business rules in functional classes. People did what they thought was more productive: coded as the programming language and time allowed them. The same happened with Micro Focus Cobol. For us it wasn't compatible with UML.
Never again did we use UML to design applications...
hmmm maybe sometimes to show the big boss what we were doing.
Disclaimer: I know I am very outdated in technology possibly antedeluvian. I've been doing a "reading and writing thousands of words in MS Word" job for 4 years! Sometimes I would draw a diagram or two in Visio. I am so outdated I have forgotten how to setup my computer!!
BTW I finished my thesis. I still need to write an abstract and print it out though :/
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felicitations chechi sensual!!!!! terminaste la tesis ya falta poco para el examen oral!!!! yeeee!!!!!!!
p.d eres toda una experta en word!!! jeje :P
CONGRATULATIONS!!!! That's great news!!!! You'll soon be Doctor Prunuts!!!! When is your viva??
Another Dr to be born soon! Congrats! I had forgotten about Prunuts, but maybe it is time to refresh some memory with Cobol, Dbase (my favourite), Power Builder, Visual Basic, Fox Pro (Windows version of course), Word Perfect (and Word Star), Flow, Microsoft Quicken (I bought it for my small business), Atari and others....
BTW, I found my undergraduate dissertation in a floppy 5 1/4 disk, any one has a drive to read it?
Flow!!!, WordStar!!!! and I thought I was outdated!! Never mind the 5¼ drive, your dissertation has been outdated for years now.
Remember the DFDs?