Sage's SCAFFOLDS - A developers point of view.

Question

The Scaffolds style layers are rocking. They allow the logical
separation between function, data, and displays. And each of them have
their own limb on the family tree which is well thought out and easy to
preserve.
There are three layers which you get with Scaffolds.
SCF layer:
This is where Scaffolds lives. If you need to upgrade scaffolds this is
the place where that happens. Away from all the stuff you have already
working...which buffers you from changes. We have went through 3
different upgrades from Sage's Scaffolds and they went rather smoothly.
( not accounting that we were running Forte Beta 3....)
This layer is where the true heart of Scaffolds lives. The meat and the
drive of Scaffolds which manages and controls what is called when and
why resides here.
AppBase Layer
This is where you could start to do some modifications to
Scaffolds..this is the first of the Style layers. We have reserved this
layer for needed fixes between Scaffolds and our own style layer. Not
much resides here usually for our development.
App Layer
This is where our magic begins. With the top down inherence which
Scaffolds has if a modification is done here all the children which
inherits from anything in this layer also gets the change.
Like...if you have a mess of windows which need a certain widget and the
same action for that widget...you could "roll" that widget and action
into this layer there by giving it to all the children for "free". All
a new child would have to do to get the same inter-workings of the other
windows is to subclass of the same parent.
This is really nice since, like most window projects you would want your
windows to act the same and if you make a change you only have to do it
in one place...and not all over every window.
Those are the Three layers which are provided for you and you can add
your own below those to buffer changes. We added another layer below
the App layer to continue the chain. In this new layer we do hard core
development and find out what...if any...things we can roll up to the
app layer.
In each of these layers there are 5 projects. In order of supplier
plans....
Constants
Classes
Services
Facilities
Windows
Which really helps keep things in perspective, and makes sure those who
need to see something sees it and nothing else. So this helps keep
those nasty circular suppliers in check.
In the window classes you get a bunch of pre-called methods.
init
onframeopen
ondisplayframe
ondisplayedframe
oncloseframe
onmapindata
onmapoutdata
(there are more...but this is a good start...)
The nice thing about windows is they are separated from the data by
means of a content object. The content object has the information which
the window needs to display. So you separate the acting like a window
away from managing data. This makes for some really easy reuse
concepts. Then on top of that your Business objects are kept way from
the data base by means of a Strategy builder, which associates a BO with
the needed connections to get to and from the data base.
Then there is the Frame/controller/view branch.
The Frame has like menus and toolbars which are common on all frames of
that type.
On a Frame you can have either a single view or a view controller.
On a view controller you can have another view controller and/or views
So you can nest really quickly pre-made groupings of widgets and
actions.
Views for example would be a address widget grouping. With street,
city, state, zip such included with the required actions. Like zip code
checking, making sure they include a state in the US..such.
Now how many places in your app has a need to show addresses? Well
after building the widget groupings and actions the first time...it
takes like two or three lines of code to include that view into a frame
or view controller. And if by chance you want to add country to all
your addresses, you change it one place and it ripples through your
system without need to revisit all who use that grouping.
So as far as Customizations....man...it helps you do that in a
controlled and easy way which will really speed your development. This
is because you build reusable parts every time you build a frame with
views.
Also may I add, that Sage just rules. We went against their advice and
started using Forte Beta 3 with Scaffolds and they helped us work
through the bugs and the problems on the fly. At the time we started
Scaffolds did not support Forte Beta 3, but after a bunch of heart aches
and long sessions Sage's Scaffolds seems to me right now to be well
worth the time and effort ( not to even forget to mention the money)
that we have invested into it.
Hope this helps you see the added value Scaffolds gives your Forte
investment.
Billy Cole
Software Engineer
GTE Government Systems
From: [email protected][SMTP:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, September 04, 1997 9:30 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: SCAFFOLDs Customization
Does anyone have experience using SCAFFOLDs style layer? What type of
customiziation does it allow and how flexible is it? Does it provide
for
both enterprise-wide customization and application-wide customization?
The
literature from Sage doesn't provide much detail so I would appreciate
hearing from those who have used it.
Sincerely,
CJ

Answer 1

The Scaffolds style layers are rocking. They allow the logical
separation between function, data, and displays. And each of them have
their own limb on the family tree which is well thought out and easy to
preserve.
There are three layers which you get with Scaffolds.
SCF layer:
This is where Scaffolds lives. If you need to upgrade scaffolds this is
the place where that happens. Away from all the stuff you have already
working...which buffers you from changes. We have went through 3
different upgrades from Sage's Scaffolds and they went rather smoothly.
( not accounting that we were running Forte Beta 3....)
This layer is where the true heart of Scaffolds lives. The meat and the
drive of Scaffolds which manages and controls what is called when and
why resides here.
AppBase Layer
This is where you could start to do some modifications to
Scaffolds..this is the first of the Style layers. We have reserved this
layer for needed fixes between Scaffolds and our own style layer. Not
much resides here usually for our development.
App Layer
This is where our magic begins. With the top down inherence which
Scaffolds has if a modification is done here all the children which
inherits from anything in this layer also gets the change.
Like...if you have a mess of windows which need a certain widget and the
same action for that widget...you could "roll" that widget and action
into this layer there by giving it to all the children for "free". All
a new child would have to do to get the same inter-workings of the other
windows is to subclass of the same parent.
This is really nice since, like most window projects you would want your
windows to act the same and if you make a change you only have to do it
in one place...and not all over every window.
Those are the Three layers which are provided for you and you can add
your own below those to buffer changes. We added another layer below
the App layer to continue the chain. In this new layer we do hard core
development and find out what...if any...things we can roll up to the
app layer.
In each of these layers there are 5 projects. In order of supplier
plans....
Constants
Classes
Services
Facilities
Windows
Which really helps keep things in perspective, and makes sure those who
need to see something sees it and nothing else. So this helps keep
those nasty circular suppliers in check.
In the window classes you get a bunch of pre-called methods.
init
onframeopen
ondisplayframe
ondisplayedframe
oncloseframe
onmapindata
onmapoutdata
(there are more...but this is a good start...)
The nice thing about windows is they are separated from the data by
means of a content object. The content object has the information which
the window needs to display. So you separate the acting like a window
away from managing data. This makes for some really easy reuse
concepts. Then on top of that your Business objects are kept way from
the data base by means of a Strategy builder, which associates a BO with
the needed connections to get to and from the data base.
Then there is the Frame/controller/view branch.
The Frame has like menus and toolbars which are common on all frames of
that type.
On a Frame you can have either a single view or a view controller.
On a view controller you can have another view controller and/or views
So you can nest really quickly pre-made groupings of widgets and
actions.
Views for example would be a address widget grouping. With street,
city, state, zip such included with the required actions. Like zip code
checking, making sure they include a state in the US..such.
Now how many places in your app has a need to show addresses? Well
after building the widget groupings and actions the first time...it
takes like two or three lines of code to include that view into a frame
or view controller. And if by chance you want to add country to all
your addresses, you change it one place and it ripples through your
system without need to revisit all who use that grouping.
So as far as Customizations....man...it helps you do that in a
controlled and easy way which will really speed your development. This
is because you build reusable parts every time you build a frame with
views.
Also may I add, that Sage just rules. We went against their advice and
started using Forte Beta 3 with Scaffolds and they helped us work
through the bugs and the problems on the fly. At the time we started
Scaffolds did not support Forte Beta 3, but after a bunch of heart aches
and long sessions Sage's Scaffolds seems to me right now to be well
worth the time and effort ( not to even forget to mention the money)
that we have invested into it.
Hope this helps you see the added value Scaffolds gives your Forte
investment.
Billy Cole
Software Engineer
GTE Government Systems
From: [email protected][SMTP:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, September 04, 1997 9:30 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: SCAFFOLDs Customization
Does anyone have experience using SCAFFOLDs style layer? What type of
customiziation does it allow and how flexible is it? Does it provide
for
both enterprise-wide customization and application-wide customization?
The
literature from Sage doesn't provide much detail so I would appreciate
hearing from those who have used it.
Sincerely,
CJ