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FOURTH GENERATION LANGUAGES:
PRODUCING MORE POWERFUL
ST
DEVELOPERS IN THE 21 CENTURY
K-Rise Systems
THE IT DOLLAR HAS BECOME A MUCH TIGHTER
ONE SINCE THE 1990’S. IN HOUSE STAFF HAS
BEEN DECREASED AND THE USE OF CONSULTING
AND OUTSOURCING IS VERY COMMON PLACE.
COMPETITION, HOWEVER, DRIVES EVERYONE
TO CONTINUE TO SQUEEZE THAT IT DOLLAR
EVEN MORE.
While consultants specialize in areas which your staff does not have
expertise, they are still expensive and leave you dependent on them
long after a project has been completed. outsourcing gives you the
flexibility to increase and decrease your it resources ad hoc but still
lacks the control that is possible and more desirable with resident
staff. while enhancing your companies use of jd edwards is often a
top priority there are other systems and programming projects on the
docket that may only partially if at all include jd edwards work. there
are many products to enhance productivity on the market but often
they can be limited in scope making them little more than a bandaid
with a one time use. is it possible to address these diverse issues in
one fell swoop? the answer may lie in the use of powerful
4gl programming languages.
developer. They can be put together as lists of results or they can be
used as filters to query the various databases as well. Any long time
JD Edwards developer can quickly give users a web portal with access
to the data they seek. These webparts can easily use the JDE BSFN
and update data live right within a web portal and quickly even with
the recent addition of AJAX functionality. Using a Visio like interface
to create workflow, it is possible to quickly put a manager’s approval
in between a user and JD Edwards, if that is required, including
email notifications to the proper parties, automatically. Add to these
webparts the ability to build workflow in at any spot, for instance,
within a button or a link, leaves this programmer only limited by
his own imagination.
Keeping more projects in house
As much as Oracle would like to invade every corner of your enterprise
there are things that need doing that get done in other ways. You may
have CRM software with the development talent to go with it. Perhaps
you have a legacy system providing data to a catalog on line and its
watchful craftsman in residence. But when interaction has to happen
between JD Edwards and the CRM, there are going to be
Keep training costs down and still
build up your staff’s abilities
You probably have at least one
veteran JD Edwards Developer
on your staff, perhaps 3 or 4. They
have an accrued knowledge-base
unsurpassed in your company. They
know your legacy systems inside out
as well. Experts with twine and bailing
wire, they are the ones that everyone
turns to when something needs to be
done ‘down and dirty’. You have no
time to send them away for a couple weeks to learn Java programming
or PHP. Your department would fall apart. Many developers like this
will tell you that they would love to be able to use a web interface to
access all the wonderful data of which they have intimate knowledge
but again, don’t have the time to learn a whole new programming
paradigm. 4GL software allows for this kind of enabling. Here is an
example of how it would be possible for a developer like this to create
a salesperson interface to place an order for a customer.
The web portal factory in EASYProcess provides a way to quickly give
access to all versions of JD Edwards, or any database for that matter,
and can easily create relationships – for example, between F0101 and
F0116 for a customer look-up web portal. Once the links to the data
are in place all fields are now at the drag and drop request of the
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meetings and scheduling and things get complicated. Add another
legacy system in the middle and it is probably time to get a consulting
company involved or chalk the project up as too expensive or time
consuming to tackle. How can 4GL handle this dilemma?
One example lies in utilization of the XML Interoperability that JD
Edwards has enabled through their business functions through
EASYProcess. In Diagram 2 (Picture of BSFN Service) in the left side
you can see the elements that are part JD Edwards and Part XML/XSLT.
On the right side are all the variables available to the programmer.
In this function the programmer is mapping variables from an HTML
form in a web page into the proper places in the Business Function. It’s
a simple ‘drag and drop’ to put variables where they need to be. Of
course this is not to say that the non-JD
Edwards Person will be able to work
completely without help from your JD
Edwards Staff, however, the number of
calls for help will be drastically reduced.
In fact most programmers find that
within a short time they are able to
utilize the BSFN Services easily. Again it
is XML tied with the versatility of XSLT
that brings the 4GL power punch to
these services.
The synergy of 4GL and Agile
development seen in the bottom line
If you have already moved into an Agile friendly development
environment or see the need to in the near future then 4GL will
be a great addition to your team. We give two examples of
this synergy.
Increasing Pairity and ‘the onsite customer’
With a 4GL it is possible to combine the concept of Pair
Programming with the concept of having a customer on-site,
especially with respect to your users from internal ‘customers’.
If we take a developer who is not terribly experienced yet with
JD Edwards and pair them with a veteran JD Edwards User or
business analyst the synergy is clear. The programmer will clearly
benefit from having a living JD Edwards Dictionary/tutor on the
spot and the JD Edwards expert will see the mental discipline
of a programmer in action. AGILE methodology also puts a lot
of stress on customer satisfaction. Not only will the programmer
benefit from the JD Edwards knowledge, but they will have instant
feedback from a customer as will the rest of the development
team. Not only that, but by utilizing a customer in this way, you
end up with several other incidental AGILE effects. You are giving
the customer access to an on-going, working product and this
‘news’ will make it back to the other customers quickly you can be
sure. You are also developing this project around a very motivated
person, an end user, who really, really wants something great to
use in the day to day. And one last synergy is that you are using the
important aspects of daily, truthful, face to face interaction.
to that the ability of software like EASYProcess to give you real
working tools right off the bat, you are going to see some happy
customers. The example earlier of a sales person’s portal is a good
one. A simple portal that looks up live customer information for a
sales person is useful all by itself. If you can put even a basic tool
like this in the hands of someone on the sales staff in a week and
the next week give them the ability to edit data, create orders or
use their blackberries to run the inquiry, you will have ROI evidence
before the month is out. One customer even adds a button in all
the web parts that are in development for instant feedback from
all ‘customers’.
A quick reading of any listing of tenets of Agile Development will
give fuel to reasons to include a 4GL product in your development
team’s workshop.
Turn more projects around more quickly
Your business analysts are on the front lines. They know the day to
day struggles of the average and above average user. They love
making the lives of their ‘customers’ easier by finding solutions. But
when it comes to breaking new ground and creating something
completely new they are dependent on your programming staff.
Fast and Frequent Iterations with product that can be
used immediately
Instead give them the 4GL tool that can take their problem solving
ability and give it new development skills. The EASYProcess
workflow comes with a myriad of services giving the analyst tools
with connectors that allow them to do things that would take
months of training. Allowing your non-developers to finish small
projects for the respective departments, under the watchful eye of
your IT staff, will allow your programmers to focus on larger tasks.
A good 4GL tool is going to very rapidly increase the time you
need to go live with any project, even if you are waterfalling it. If
you are truly following AGILE, however, the amount of useful ‘code’
that can be created in one or two weeks is phenomenal. If you add
Proof that a 4GL can be very effective in reducing development
times comes from a customer’s development team that we trained
recently to complete an ecommerce project. Their desire was to
bring live data in and out of JD Edwards giving their customers a
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better experience on-line. They had allotted two to three months
for the project. The team had all the skills necessary for the project
– all they really lacked was an additional eight hours a day to
complete their usual work load. After two days of training they
were able to complete the project within a week. By giving them
this tool, their manager also gave himself the gifts of coming in
way under schedule and doubling the productivity of his staff. He
also added a new, almost unheard of feature to his people’s lives,
that is, fun. The tool was fun to use.
Below are some examples of the EASYProcess services and the
skills they ‘give’ to everyone on your staff.
Database Sevices: MSQL, OleDb, ODBC. Basic inquiry,
criteria selection, add record lookup these services enable the
EASYProcess user to latch into just about any database allowing
for the creation of complex workflow bring data to and from your
up to date and legacy systems.
Date and Time functions:
Fully convertible from and to JD Edwards standards. The ability to
create workflow that can make decisions on the day of the month,
the hour of the day, how much time has passed since some other
update etc.
Email: Services that both send and receive email. Access to
the Email server is setup and tested in advance meaning the
developer only needs to know the name of the specific email
box being used in the process. Ability to include variables from
any database that has been linked to previously makes it a very
powerful information sending tool.
Text parsing:
Gives the ability to go through a mailbox on the email server
looking for various triggers that can fire processes automatically.
A response from a customer, internal requests for approvals,
emails from Blackberries all capable of updating JD Edwards
automatically. All using proper authentication.
HTML services: Create a fully functioning web page complete with
live data from JD Edwards or any other databse. Full use of HTML
sessions allowing variables to be passed into and taken out of any
other processes being used in the application.
PDF: Creation of PDF forms from HTML pages allowing quick
report creation.
iSeries Emulation: Connectors that allow for opening and closing
sessions, moving through all menus allowing for inquiring and
updating JD Edwards.
In a sense a 4GL development tool is kind of like being given
a blank check by corporate to hire your IT ‘Dream Team”.
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Who would go in your line up? Would you double up on web
developers? Maybe cover all your bases with a couple each of a
C#, Java, VB, .NET etc programmers? Get yourself a dozen 10
year JD Edwards veterans? Using a 4GL Toolset basically puts the
onus of hiring that staff on the back of the software development
company allowing you to reap the benefits with increased projects
developed in-house and those completed in a much faster time
with a much happier staff.
Surprise! Your staff already is your dream team!
About K-Rise Systems
EASYCommerce is a full-featured eCommerce product integrated
to JD Edwards data, live, that you get the keys to. EASYProcess
is a 4GL tool making the sky the limit for applications/projects
you can complete in-house with live JD Edwards data-VSS/CSS
portals, workflow, approval processes and hand held computing
solutions. Visit them online at www.krisesystems.com.