Introduction to Pathmaker

Customizing Pathmaker Applications
Pathmaker Applications
2–12 067867 Tandem Computers Incorporated
Help Text When application developers create requesters with the Pathmaker product, one of
their tasks is to write and enter the text that will appear on the end user’s help screen.
The Pathmaker product handles all of the complexities of storing and displaying the
information to the end user in the appropriate format. The Pathmaker product even
provides a utility (HELPUTIL) that allows help text to be easily changed after the
application has been moved to production.
Messages Application developers can provide the end user with meaningful messages from a
service by including the messages in the service code they write. These messages
could explain an error, suggest a next step, or simply indicate a successful action.
Advanced Customization
Techniques
The Pathmaker product offers additional ways to customize applications. These
customization techniques allow the greatest amount of flexibility to application
developers creating sophisticated applications. To use these methods effectively,
experience in coding Pathway applications is very helpful.
These techniques are discussed in detail in the Pathmaker Programming Guide and
include:
Incorporating SCREEN COBOL code written by application developers into
specific locations in the requester code the Pathmaker product generates.
Changing global application attributes such as the advisory message attributes
and terminal time-out limits.
Defining data for use with the Pathmaker product.
Registering applications developed outside the Pathmaker product.
Creating code macros that can be shared.
Modifying the skeleton files that the Pathmaker product uses to generate source
code for requesters and servers.