Design Methodology › Step Four: Writing Process Code for the Dialogs › Writing the Source Code › Programming Aids

Programming Aids

To improve the efficiency of the development process and to help maintain standards, an installation might institute some of the following procedures for the programming staff:

• Create templates of dialog premap and response processes. The programmer can obtain a copy of the template, rename it, and add the specific dialog logic.
• Provide a list of the standard (site-specific) work records that are to be used by each dialog.
• Provide process code for standard routines. Identify commonly performed activities and decide how they are to be handled. Develop process code for these activities and store as modules in the dictionary so that any dialog can link to them when necessary. For example, routines can be developed to handle date conversions, forward and backward paging, database error routines, and message formatting.

The following text illustrates a type of boilerplate code that can be developed for a premap process; the template demonstrates a type of boilerplate code that can be developed for a response process. These templates contain the standard logic for interfacing with common subroutines.