Project Management, Organization, and Structure

In AcuBench, application development is organized into three levels of structure: workspace, project, and program.

The central unit is the project. An AcuBench project includes all of the files and resources needed to build, test, and deploy an application. Every project has its own compile, runtime, and environment settings (in fact, projects can have many sets of settings, called modes). Every project is autonomous, although it can coexist and share resources with other projects.

To provide greater development flexibility, projects inhabit a larger working environment called the workspace. The workspace hosts one or more projects and provides a common work area that supports the concurrent development of multiple projects. The workspace layer also makes it possible to standardize AcuBench default settings (for code generation, graphical user interface and report design, and general environment behavior, among other options) across projects.

A Workspace window displays components of each project in the workspace, providing easy and organized access to project components, options, and settings. Through this window, you can instantly switch between projects and quickly copy components from one project to another. Each project's state information is preserved and each project's unique settings (compiler, runtime, and environment options) are maintained. Projects can, but do not have to, share files. Projects are not formally related in any way, other than belonging to the same workspace.

Every project has at least one program and can have many programs. A program may be a single COBOL source file, a source file and its COPY files and resources, or a source file augmented by a program structure file. When you work in AcuBench, the program structure file is what makes it possible to use the many graphical design tools and editors (excluding the Code Editor) designed to streamline code development. Only programs that include a program structure file appear in the Workspace window's Structure tab.

We recommend that all AcuBench users read Development Approaches. If you intend to use AcuBench's design tools and code generation facilities, it is also important that you read Automatic Code Generation.

The workspace, project, and program concepts are discussed in more detail in the sections that follow.