Introduction to Pathmaker

Glossary
Glossary–8 067867 Tandem Computers Incorporated
request message. A type of interprocess communication (IPC) message sent from a
requester and received by a particular service. When an end user presses a function
key associated with a business task, the requester formats a message that identifies the
service and includes the data needed by the service to do its work. A request message
is initiated in the SCREEN COBOL requester code by a SEND statement. Pathway
routes the request to a server process containing the desired service.
schema. An EDIT file that contains a formal representation of data composed of DDL
statements that describe the data as fields, groups of fields, or records.
screen. 1. That part of the terminal on which screen images are displayed. 2. A screen
image. 3. The logical screen associated with a requester, corresponding to the
SCREEN section of a SCREEN COBOL program unit. The logical screen defines the
locations, lengths, and other attributes of fields displayed on the end user's screen.
SCREEN COBOL. A language similar to COBOL designed specifically for writing
requester programs, including descriptions of screen images. This language is
supplied as part of Pathway. The Pathmaker product generates SCREEN COBOL
programs from the requester information in a project catalog.
SCREEN COBOL library. A set of disk files that contains the requester programs after
they have been compiled by the SCOBOLX compiler provided with Pathway. The
library consists of these files: POBJDIR, POBJCOD, and, optionally, POBJSYM.
screen navigation. The ability to move between the requester screens in an application.
screen painter. A component of the Pathmaker full screen interface that allows
application developers to modify application screens generated by the Pathmaker
product. With the screen painter, data items can be moved to different screen
locations and borders drawn to improve a screen's readability.
server. A program comprising one or more services. Servers communicate with
requesters and access and manipulate the database. Each server is a context-free
process that does not require memory of a previous transaction in order to process the
current transaction. See also registered service/server, custom server, and standard
server.
server class. A named family of identical server processes, each of which is created
from the same object file on disk. Server classes are created by Pathway at run time.
server process. A running database management program that handles IPC messages
for one or more services. Pathway uses object code to create running server processes.
server skeleton. A file, consisting of source text lines plus special macro language
command lines, that the Pathmaker product uses to generate server source code.
There are two server skeletons provided with the Pathmaker product—one for
generating COBOL85 servers and one for generating C servers.
service. A unit of work to be performed by a server, corresponding to a single SEND
operation in a Pathway environment. See also custom service, registered
service/server, and standard service.