MERANT Micro Focus Server Express

Programmer's Guide to Creating User Interfaces



MERANT™

Issue 2
March 2000


Copyright © 2000 MERANT International Limited. All rights reserved.
This document and the proprietary marks and names used herein are protected by international law.


MERANT has made every effort to ensure that this manual is correct and accurate, but reserves the right to make changes without notice at its sole discretion at any time.

The software described in this document is supplied under a license and may be used or copied only in accordance with the terms of such license, and in particular any warranty of fitness of MERANT products for any particular purpose is expressly excluded and in no event will MERANT be liable for any consequential loss.

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Preface

The Server Express Programmer's Guides are complete guides to specific areas of Server Express.

This guide contains everything you need to know to create user interfaces with a Server Express, covering both character and graphical user interfaces.

Audience

You should be familiar with the COBOL language and with your operating system. You should read the Getting Started book and be familiar with the COBOL development cycle described in the Server Express User's Guide before reading other books in the book set.

Notation

The notation used in the books is as follows:

Command Lines

The notation used to describe the format of command lines is as follows:

Notes

Key to COBOL System Library Routines

This book contains descriptions of COBOL system library routines. Each description contains the routine name and function and the following entries (as appropriate):

Syntax: Shows the CALL statement you could use to call the routine.

For all routines except the call-by-number routines (those of the form X"nn"), the optional RETURNING clause is also shown. Every routine returns a value showing the result of the operation. Unless otherwise indicated, zero indicates success, nonzero indicates failure. This value is left in the data item specified in the RETURNING clause, in this reference, status-code. If this clause is omitted, the value is left in the special register RETURN-CODE. (If call-convention bit two is set, RETURN-CODE is not changed.)

status-code must be a numeric data item capable of holding positive values from 0 to 65535; it is defined in cbltypes.cpy as cblt-rtn-code.

The name of the routine must be coded in upper case.

Parameters: Describes any parameters shown in the RETURNING and USING clause. A parameter enclosed in brackets, for example, [parameter1] is optional and might not be needed for all forms of the routine.
On Entry: Indicates which of the parameters shown are passed on entry
On Exit: Indicates which of the parameters shown are returned on exit

Where bits of one or more bytes are referenced, bit 0 is the least significant (rightmost) bit.

Comments: Provides any additional information necessary for the successful use of the routine
See Also: Lists other related topics.