1. Introduction to Business Application Modeling

Related video: Introduction to Business Application Modeling (BAM 1 of 9)

Hi, this is Shannon Wallner, and in this video series, we’ll model and generate an application with the Business Application Modeling tool in Genero Studio.

Business Application Modeling or BAM, is a way to design an application by modelling its components through diagrams – programs, forms, reports, and the relationships between them are modelled allowing the the tool to generate the code for a fully functional Genero application.

Let’s start by looking at an example. This officestore demo comes with Genero Studio and shows you some of the possibilities of using the application generator to do the coding work for you.

At the heart of the generator is the BA diagram or Business Application diagram. This diagram manages all information about the program such as the program flow and components, the relationships and database information.

In this BA diagram you can see that there are different components that make up the application:

• Programs
• Forms
• Zoom Forms
• Reports

The arrows indicate the relationship between the components. For example the Order Program has a main Order Form from which 2 zoom or lookup forms can be called. The form is also related to a report component.

The components and relations on the model are used to generate the code for the application. The components are also listed in the Project and the grayed out Intermediary Files show you the source code files that are created when the program is generated.

Let’s build and run this application to see what it looks like.

As you can see the generated program allows me to search and browse …

update…

insert …

and delete rows.

I can also run reports that are a part of the diagram.

All of the available actions are in the toolbar and topmenu.

The generated 4gl files can be opened and viewed like any other source file. You’ll notice that if I bring up the app in the sequence diagram that great care is taken in producing code that is clean, elegant, functional and reusable.

The source 4gl files that are generated can even be customized allowing you to add your own functions, variables, and program behaviors into special POINT and BLOCK areas. Your code is preserved even when the application is re-generated. And, should you find that you prefer some additional functionality or some code to be generated differently for all generated applications, you can customize the templates on which the generated code is based.

But before we get to customizing, let’s step back and first simply generate our own application from the officestore database