Pathmaker Programming Guide

Creating a DB Requester Application
Pathmaker Application Development Overview
3–24 067868 Tandem Computers Incorporated
Multifile DB Requesters
A Pathmaker application based on multifile DB requesters allows the end user to
access or maintain information from more than one related file. These applications
display a screen to the end user that contains a title, one or more sets of data fields,
labels that identify these fields, and function key prompts.
Boxes. To distinguish data in one file from data in another file, the Pathmaker product
can enclose the data fields and labels from one file within a box.
Figure 3-9 provides an example of a screen from a multifile DB requester application
used to maintain information about employees and their clients in a test database. (In
this example, there is a one-to-many relationship between employees and clients. One
employee might have zero, one, or many clients, but each client is associated with only
one employee.)
Figure 3-9. Application Screen Based on a Multifile DB Requester
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Department 905 Employee Information Page 1/1
=================================================================
+ Employee Name __________________________________________
* Employee Number __________
F3-Help F5-Read Next F12-Delete SF16-Exit
F4-Read First F10-Insert F14-Update
SF10-Insert Box SF14-Update Box
Street ________________________________________________
City ________________ State __ Zip _____
Telephone ___ ___ ____
Job Title __________________________________
Salary Grade _______
Hire Date __ __ __
+ Client Name ________________________________________________
* Client Number ___________
Client Company ___________________________________________
+ Client Name ________________________________________________
* Client Number ___________
Client Company ___________________________________________
=================================================================
Join field
Border of
outermost
box
Fields of
outermost
box (parent)
Remaining
fields of
outermost
box (parent)
Fields of
nested
box
(child)
Border of
outermost
box
The screen area bordered by the line of “equal signs” is considered the outermost box.
When a DB requester application displays records from more than one file, it nests
other boxes composed of dashed lines within this outermost box.
Each box can contain information from only one file, but a box can display multiple
records from that one file. These multiples from one file are referred to as repetitions.
In this example, two repetitions of records from the client file are displayed on the
screen.