A new version of Construct Spectrum, Natural's browser user interface and Web service generator for mainframes, is now available from Software AG's SA office.
According to general manager, Joe Curran, Construct Spectrum Version 4.5 speeds up and simplifies the development and maintenance of both browser user interfaces and open standard programming interfaces (Web services).
He said the software could prove particularly useful for application developers, who should be spending their time implementing business processes and business rules rather than concerning themselves with building user interfaces.
For each element of a component's interface, and depending on data type and range of values, Construct Spectrum Version 4.5 generates an appropriate graphical user interface (GUI) control. In addition to those data input/output controls, navigation bars for controlling application flow are also generated. Such navigation controls are either generated out of high-level specifications maintained through Natural's application generator Natural Construct, or out of manual specifications made at generation time. All generation defaults can of course be changed interactively before or during generation.
The front-ends are implemented in HTML (and JavaScript) that is dynamically created at runtime by applying a Construct Spectrum-created style sheet (XSL) to a Web service (XML) which is also generated by Construct Spectrum and based on Microsoft's .Net technology.
Complementary to Construct Spectrum is the Natural Engineer, a versatile code analysis and re-engineering tool. Because Construct Spectrum requires the business logic to be available in modularised form, monolithic application code can be decomposed into modules using Natural Engineer.
Construct Spectrum Version 4.5 is now available as a general release for OS/390, z/OS, VSE/ESA and BS2000/OSD.
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