By Greg Grisham

ow can you have a success story with a language that hasn't been released yet? First, you have to establish some detailed criteria in the form of application code that exercises the language in much the same ways your Customers do.

That's just what we developed. Here are some of the applications we've used to test base functionality for BBj™. It was critical that BBj execute these programs as Visual PRO/5® does. And BBj does. You can test for yourself. Each of these applications is on the demo CD included here. See how they can all be executed in Visual PRO/5 or BBj, once again maintaining our legacy application stronghold-one set of programs running in both environments.

CHILE COMPANY PROGRAM - This customer maintenance application was built with GUIBuilder® and is an excellent demonstration of Visual PRO/5 functionality. Among the application features are the bitmap splash screen, list windows, tool buttons, tabbed child windows and data-aware grid display.

SOCKET PROGRAM - The Internet uses TCP/IP for data control and transport. Sockets are among the more robust methods for using internet protocol to communicate among disparate devices. This program shows just a little of what sockets can do and how you might use them in the Business Basic world. Sockets are already used for Web sites, print-job queuing and nightly maintenance jobs. Both a GUI version and a character version of the same code are on the CD.

HOME FINDER PROGRAM - An excellent example of GUI legacy code, this is a mnemonic-built application with pure, from-the-ground-up Visual PRO/5 functionality. Note its use of tabs and related bitmaps. While designed for the real estate market, the same functionality could well apply to a Human Resources or a Web-based, "For-Sale" application.

ATTACHED FILE PROGRAM - One of the most powerful features of Visual PRO/5 is the ability to manage and display data in a grid. If that data needs to be editable, the supporting code can be quite extensive. This application takes the functionality of our Grid Management Library and extends it to an extremely powerful grid demonstration. Several files are maintained simultaneously. A simple right-click on an item description allows direct access to the item master file. More importantly, the particular structure of this demo (it writes all edits to a local file) is a thought-provoking example of a Web application model.

E-COMMERCE - We developed our own e-commerce application in Visual PRO/5 and we run it directly in BBj…your applications will too without major modifications. Check out this excellent example of an interactive, Business Basic application with typical e-commerce functionality.

CHARACTER WEB DEMO - This application demonstrates our dedication to character-based applications in the BBj environment. It is a simple-but-common file maintenance program to which we added an HTML wrapper to call into a browser. No code modification. Take a look at the CD's PowerPoint presentation describing where the edit points are to call your own program and try it for yourself!!

With this suite, we wanted a cross-section of application code that would demonstrate the most common kinds of functionality our Customers demand in their applications. Each of these test programs has characteristics that could be expected in a production application. The challenge of BBj is to take legacy code and run it in a new infrastructure designed for the 21st century and beyond. Here, we've done it. And now, so can you.