Introduction to Pathmaker

A Suggested Life Cycle for a Pathmaker Application
Using Pathmaker—An Overview
067867 Tandem Computers Incorporated 3–13
Design The next phase is application design in which a design specification is created. The
design specification is a written document that states the solution to the end user’s
business problem, which was identified in the definition phase. This document will
become the focal point for application developers using the Pathmaker product.
When completing this phase, attention to detail and consideration for the architecture
of a Pathmaker application is essential to the ultimate success of the application.
Work should not begin on the development of a production Pathmaker application
until the design of the application is complete and has been thoroughly documented.
The design document should include the following information:
Description of the database used by this application, as follows:
Names of NonStop SQL tables and Enscribe files (DEFINE names and the
Pathmaker name for each)
Descriptions of columns and fields
Statement of integrity rules
Entity relationship diagram
Chart of the application hierarchy
Standards and naming conventions
Note DEFINE name is an alias that can be used to identify a file or table in a service. Later, when a server
containing that service is run, the actual name of the file or table will be substituted by the system.
Description of each transaction (service) in this application and the elements of
each, including:
Name of service and description
Input needed (Request message)
Transaction processing instructions (input validation, integrity checks,
calculations, database access, and so on)
Output needed (Reply messages)