ProData Prompts Programmers to Productivity with F4 List Processor

by Alex Woodie

Newly released software from ProData Computer Services should help OS/400 coders shave hours off RPG and CL program development. At the recent COMMON conference in Indianapolis, ProData announced F4 List Processor, a productivity tool aimed at relieving the repetitive process of continually writing F4 display programs. ProData's F4 List Processor helps to eliminate redundant coding by automating the development of F4 lists.

Interactive OS/400 applications make extensive use of the F4 prompt key, and users have come to rely on it to see what commands are available to them, and to specify certain options. If your shop does any development, your programmers have likely had to write their own F4 display programs. However, unless they have written their own utility to streamline the F4 display program development process--and some programmers have--they're likely building each F4 display program from scratch, every time. The folks at ProData say there's now a better way.

F4 List Processor allows programmers to dynamically create F4 display programs one time, and then use them over and over, as they need them. The utility walks the programmer through a query-like front-end to help the programmer select the display program's file, field, search, and window-size criteria. Each F4 display program is saved and then evoked from any program written in RPG, CL, or any other high-level language. At runtime, the file is instantly displayed in the window created, with no additional programming required, according to ProData.

In addition to streamlining development and reducing the time that programmers would have spent custom-coding F4 display programs for each interactive OS/400 application, F4 List Processor has the added benefit of standardizing a shop's development, according to ProData. The software is available now. Licenses cost $1,495.

Like all of ProData's utilities, F4 List Processor was originally developed for ProData's consultants to use in client engagements, and the company has been using F4 List Processor for years. Marion Wamsat, one of the owners of the company, says ProData saw enough demand to offer F4 List Processor as a stand-alone product. "We listened to our control group and felt that, even after years of development, customers still demand a tool like this that handles repetitive programming tasks like selection and validation tables," she says.

The Omaha, Nebraska, company is also working on several other products that will be announced later in 2003. According to the January issue of the ProData Utilities Newsletter, the company is working on a new release of XML/Pro, its utility for extracting DB2/400 data into an XML document. ProData is also working on the 7.0 release of its flagship suite of utilities, Data Base Utility (DBU), which should come out later this year. The company also has several discounts going right now, which you can check out on its Web site, at www.prodatacomputer.com.

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