# VisualAge for BASIC 1.1

(What a day was, nonsera ')

To a year of to be presented/displayed, this surroundings of programming pertaining to IBM the VisualAge family have been rejuvenated and now it is a product more stable than his predecessor.

To perhaps it assaults the question him: What is VisualAge for BASIC? It would be worth the trouble to explain first what is VisualAge. IBM presented/displayed some years ago its new surroundings of visual development that denominated VisualAge for SmallTalk. This surroundings offered a model of visual design for the referred programming language that had a good welcome in the market.

This way, IBM began with development of surroundings of programming that raises the flag of VisualAge, between which are the versions for C, for RPG, recently for Java and, in this case, for BASIC.

This way, VisualAge for BASIC is programming surroundings that have one narrow relation with IBM the VisualAge products. One of its advantages is to be multiplatforms. It can install it in Windows 95/NT, superior OS/2 3.x or and AIX, and can use it like part of procedures stored in Windows 3.1.

As it can see in the figure, its surroundings of programming let glimpse several windows: Toolbox (Picture of tools), Design (Design), Form (Form), publishing Code (Publisher of code), Component catalog (Catalogue of components) and publishing Property (Publisher of properties). The evaluated version is in English, although in the proportionate CD-ROM also was the version in Brazilian Portuguese and Italian.

This surroundings allow the object-oriented programming of complete way. The objects with a complete use of encapsulamiento, inheritance and polymorphism can be used. The same it could become in the previous version, despite were corrected the following details:

v the OS/2 users already can execute several instances of the program and, as well, several instances of the feasible ones generated by VisualAGE. This single one was available in Windows.

v the surroundings no longer causes an error when double click in the menu becomes of the system of the Publisher of code in OS/2.

v corrections to the book "for VisualAge BASIC Getting Started" have become, simultaneously that have added other books.

v has been corrected:

Ø

the errors when using an editable grid.

Ø

the saturation of the memory when manipulating chain functions.

Ø

the errors when creating or executing stored procedures of DB2.

Ø the errors when unfolding or processing special characters or DBCS.

Even, this surroundings have improved its performance, that in his first version was hardly acceptable. Although still it does not reach the speed of a compiled language 100% (since it uses a file in run time that it interprets to the feasible resultant), reaches the performance of Visual BASIC 4.

This language can read the programs done in version 3 and 4 of Visual BASIC, although the opposite cannot be done. This is because the format in which the programs in VisualAge for BASIC are stored differs completely from the format of Visual BASIC. With this compatibility of VisualAge it arrives at the mind from which the instructions of Visual BASIC can be used in VisualAge for BASIC, and it is not mistaken.

Why, then, to use VisualAge? It is a question with much sense and that it has an interesting answer: it is multiplatforms. You can create a Windows 95 development and compile it so that she runs in HP-ux. Equally it could have created a program in OS/2 and to compile it to work in Windows NT the only thing that would need would be to take its source code to the corresponding platform and to use the version of VisualAge that is installed in the platform of marras for, then, to see work to its program.

It is obvious that everything will not be able to work in all the platforms. If it uses, for example, objects OLE in their applications, will not be able to use the program in OS/2 or AIX. But if Model of Objects of the System uses objects SOM (. It is a protocol structured in objects that allow to the applications the access and use of the objects and its definitions, without concerning the programming language in which they were created and with no need of recompilar the application) it is very probable that its application works without problems.

VisualAge for BASIC gives support to the different technologies according to the operating system in which it is used, like OLE in Windows and OpenDoc in OS/2. In the first version it was necessary to look for and to load the file constant.bas to be able to use a set of constants similar to which is used in VB3. the surroundings Now load of predetermined way such file, to that him are possible to be made the changes necessary to accredit the names of the constants with which they are used in Visual BASIC.

In order to obtain greater data of this surroundings of programming conmino him to that one communicates to IBM from Mexico to telephone 387-4000 or visits his page Web in http://www.software.ibm.com/ad/vabasic/. However, it is a pain to know beforehand that this surroundings already have been discontinued by IBM still before this article was published in PCSemanal. We continued ourselves reading!