Guardian Programmer's Guide

Table Of Contents
Writing a Requester Program
Guardian Programmer’s Guide 421922-014
21 - 2
Terminal Interface
Terminal Interface
The terminal interface deals with writing information to the terminal and reading
information typed at the terminal. In its simplest form, the terminal interface consists of
a series of prompts and user responses (using the WRITEREAD[X] procedure) to find
out what the user wants the application to do. After the application has processed a
request, the terminal-interface code usually displays the result on the terminal (using
the WRITE[X] procedure).
Interaction with the terminal can be in conversational mode or block mode. See
Section 10, Communicating With Terminals, for details.
Figure 21-1 shows a requester interface with just one terminal. To work with more than
one terminal, either you can create duplicate requester processes, your requester can
be programmed to interface with more than one terminal, or your requester can
communicate with a terminal-simulation process that controls several terminals.
Section
24, Writing a Terminal Simulator, discusses terminal-simulation processes.
Field Validation
The field-validation part of the requester checks the credibility of data entered at the
terminal. For example, it might check that a person's name consists of alphabetic
characters or that a person’s age is not more than 150 years.
Data Mapping
Data mapping involves conversion and structuring of input data into a form suitable for
processing by the server process. For example, numeric ASCII input gets converted
into signed binary numbers (using the NUMIN procedure) or the formatter converts
Figure 21-1. Functions of a Requester Process
VST103.VSD