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This chapter describes the way Web Option Markup Language Skeletons can be generated for DDS that is not generated from CA 2E.
This functionality has been included with Web Option for users with application suites that contain both CA 2E display files and also non-CA 2E display files to generate Markup Language Skeletons (MLS) for all the display files. An MLS generated for a non-CA 2E display file uses the same Web Option control values and has a similar 'look-and-feel' to an MLS generated from a CA 2E display file.
The Web Option HTML generator uses the same processing 'rules' as the CA 2E display file DDS generator uses to generate the record format and field names for the display file. Thus, when processing a CA 2E display file, the HTML generator can establish the names and relationships between record formats before it starts to process the DDS.
However, hand-written display file DDS (or DDS created by using IBM's Screen Design Aid (SDA) can use any naming scheme (or lack thereof) it chooses for both record formats and fields. Additionally, whereas CA 2E-generated DDS has all fields explicitly defined (in terms of field length and type) and positioned on the screen by row/column, hand-written DDS may have fields referenced to external fields in a field reference file (FRF) and positioned relative to other fields. Because of this lack of formalized rules across hand-written DDS, there is no easy way for the HTML generator to determine the relationships between record formats within a display file.
To provide the Web Option HTML generator with sufficient information to generate a skeleton (or skeletons) from a non-CA 2E display file, a one-time manual process is involved prior to first-time generation, where certain specially formatted comment lines, known as instructions, are added to the display file DDS. These instructions are used by the HTML generator to determine what skeletons to generate for a given display file and which record formats each skeleton should contain. Once these instructions have been added to the display file DDS, they normally do not need to be changed, unless there is a requirement to generate differently named skeletons or to use different record formats.
This section contains the following topics:
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