Recital Enterprise Studio Product Tour
This tutorial provides a product tour of the Recital Enterprise Studio IDE with particular reference to the migration of Recital, FoxPro, FoxBASE, dBase and Clipper applications into GUI client server and web enabled applications with Recital Visual Developer.
A quick tour of the Recital Enterprise
Studio IDE
Opening a Project
Opening a file in the Code Editor
Getting Help
Using the Code Editor
Adding Task Reminders to
your code
Adding Revision Comments
to your code
Deploying and Running an application
Using the Synchronization Manager
Using the Version Control Manager
Using the graphical debugger
Database Administrator Tour
Recital Visual Developer is a set of software tools and technologies that enable developers to migrate Recital, FoxPro, FoxBASE, dBase and Clipper applications to Linux, UNIX, OpenVMS or Windows servers. Recital Visual Developer enables developers to very quickly migrate and deploy existing applications that adapt to an organization's new IT infrastructure and require minimal redevelopment. With Recital Visual Developer, existing applications can be transformed into modern web-based applications and run in a browser without the need to redevelop these applications from scratch. This can result in huge cost savings to an organization.
Specifically, Recital Visual Developer includes:
The Recital Enterprise Studio IDE, an Integrated Development Environment that supports development and deployment of all Recital products.
Mirage .NET Windows and Web clients, which provide a rich user interface for your migrated applications.
The Mirage Application Server (MAS), which enables line-of-business applications to run client/server across the Internet.
To an organization Recital Visual Developer will:
Reduce costs associated with migrating existing applications. Recital Visual Developer provides everything you need to migrate existing Recital, FoxPro, SCO FoxBASE, dBase and Clipper applications without having to rewrite them.
Improve integration with other applications. Once migration is complete you can enhance and extend your applications with Windows .NET Forms, import and export data to Microsoft Office applications, and generate great looking management reports in Excel, PDF, or Crystal Reports.
To the solution developer, Recital Visual Developer offers:
Rapid time to market. Recital Visual Developer enables solution developers and IT departments the ability to migrate legacy applications quickly and reliably with minimal development cost.
Ease of maintenance and deployment. Recital Visual Developer reduces the total cost of ownership and provides a greater return on investment through its cross-platform, server-centric architecture and well-managed, secure client code running within the proven and well-tested .NET Common Language Runtime environment.
When you start the Recital Enterprise Studio, you are immediately placed within the integrated development environment, also called the IDE.
The IDE provides all the tools you need to migrate, design, develop, test, debug, or deploy Recital 9 applications, allowing rapid prototyping and a shorter development time.
Let's take a tour of the IDE to help you familiarize yourself with it.
The Recital Enterprise Studio IDE comprises:
The Menu Bar
The Tool Bar
The Project Explorer
The Project Workspace
The Output Window
The Status Bar
The “Help” tab of the Project Explorer contains a wealth of useful links to information that will assist you in using the IDE and also configuring and deploying both Mirage .NET graphical and traditional Recital terminal applications.
The Horizontal and Vertical Splitter Bars can be used to resize the Project Explorer, Project WorkSpace and the Output Window.
Let’s open up the mirage_demo project that ships with the product and look at some of the features of the IDE in more depth.
Click on the mirage_demo project in the Project Workspace
After opening the mirage_demo project, you can see the files that are included in this project in the Project Files tab of the Project Explorer.
Double-click on the demo_controls.prg filename in the project files tree, and the file will be opened in the Code Editor in the Project Workspace.
Note how the program code is colorized to improve its readability.
For example, if you click the Recital SQL Reference link the SQL documentation will be displayed.
The Code Editor contains many useful features to speed up development and improve code readability including:
Select the Edit | Advanced menu for further details.
Text can be bookmarked.
Common keystrokes can be recorded as a macro and played back later.
If you have not already done so, open up the mirage_demo project then double-click on the demo_controls.prg filename in the project files tree, and the file will be opened Code Editor in the Project Workspace.
Move the mouse cursor to to any blank line in the demo_controls.prg file and then press Enter.
Following that type the word if followed by a space. Notice how Dynamic help is displayed for the 4GL if statement.
As you continue to type, the Dynamic Help changes in context. e.g if you type the text:
If substr(
The Dynamic Help for the SUBSTR() function will be displayed.
Clicking on the 
button in
the dynamic help popup displays the manual page for the language element (command
or function).
The Dynamic Help can be “pinned” into the Dynamic
Help tab of the Project Explorer by clicking 
in the upper
right corner of the Dynamic Help popup.
You can “unpin” the dynamic help by clicking on the button in
the Dynamic Help tab.
You can customize the behavior of the dynamic help from the help menu. Pressing Ctrl+F1 toggles it off and on.
The Code Editor also allows you to split the current file being edited into two editing panels. This allows the same file to be edited in two places in the file at the same time, and can be very useful for looking at procedure/functions when writing code that calls them.
You split the editor panel by dragging the Vertical Splitter control
.
You can associate a task reminder within a program file. Any developer who opens that code file will see the task appear in the Task List when they click the Refresh button in the Tasks tab of the Output Window.
You add reminders to a Task List, for example, to instruct a developer to implement a certain function or feature, write specific error-handling code, and so on. Clicking a Task item in the Task List places the cursor on the line in the code that contains the TODO: item.
Task reminders can indicate problems to be corrected or simply work that needs to be completed.
To add a task reminder, use the // comment markers, and start the comment with the word 'TODO:', or select the Edit | Advanced | Insert Task Comment menu, or press the Ctrl+T key.
You can place Tasks Reminders like this throughout your source code.
You can navigate through the Task Reminders by either:
Double-clicking on the task row in the tasks grid
Or
Selecting View | Tasks | Next Task from the Menu Bar
Or
Pressing the F4 key
You can annotate your code with Revision Comments when you make changes to remind yourself (and other developers) what was done and why you did it. Any developer who opens that program file will see the Revision history appear in the Revision History List when they click the Refresh button in the Revision History tab of the Output Window.
You can add Revision Comments to your code by selecting the Edit | Advanced | Insert Revision Comment menu, or by pressing Ctrl+R.
A Revision Comment will be added to your code that looks something like this:
And the cursor will be placed at the end of the line so that you can annotate the code change.
After you have edited program code using the Code Editor,
you can run the application by clicking the Run button
in the Tool
Bar.
The Synchronization Manager manages the 2-way synchronization (not just uploading) of modified files between the client development computer and the server deployment computer.
Key features of the Synchronization Manager
Activating the Synchronization Manager
When a project is run, the IDE determines the files that have changed between the client and the server and displays the Synchronization Manager dialog to enable you to resolve any conflicts that may have occurred by more than one person editing code at the same time.
You can click on rows of the grid in the synchronization manager and then click the appropriate button located at the bottom of the dialog.
Once you are happy with your selections, click the 
button.
Modified files will be two-way synchronized between the client and the server.
You can also run the Synchronization Manager manually
by clicking the “Synchronize” button 
in the Tool
Bar.
During development, you will repeatedly be editing files and then testing your edits by running the application. When files are synchronized with your server, older versions of files are saved under version control on the server. If for any reason you want to “go back” to an earlier version of a file you activate the Version Control Manager by selecting it from the Server menu.
The Version Control Manager dialog is then displayed. If you double-click on the rows in the upper grid, the source file will be extracted from the backups directory and displayed in the lower portion of the dialog. You can then inspect the changes you made by reading and/or searching through the file.
Click the Get button 
to retrieve the
selected file and copy back to the client. You can go back to the Revision
History dialog at any time and rollback to older or roll forward to
newer versions of files.
Historical versions of files are kept each time you synchronize
with the server. This behavior can be disabled by unchecking the 
option in
the Project Properties dialog which is displayed when you select
Project | Project Properties… from the menu bar.
The graphical debugger allows you to remotely debug your applications as they are running on the server. It includes many useful and powerful features. In this tutorial I will show you how to use the debugger.
To run your project under the debugger, you should set the project configuration as Debug from the tool bar.
When you click the run button 
in the tool
bar, the Mirage .NET Client will be activated, the Debug tab will be
selected in the Output Window, and the debugger will halt execution
of the program at the first executable command.
Click the “Step Into” button 
in the debugger
tool bar, and continue to do so until you have passed the use example
line.
In the debugger display Tabpanel, select the “Workareas” tab.
You can now click the “Workareas” navigation buttons 
to inspect
each open database table.
Selecting the “Fields” tab allows you to inspect the values of the current record in the currently selected workarea.
As the program executes, each time the debugger takes control (at a breakpoint, watchpoint, or step), all of these values are retrieved from the server and updated in the debugger Tabpanel.
You can also inspect the current memory variables by selecting the “Variables” tab.
Alternatively, when you move the mouse pointer over a variable name in your source code, the value of the variable will be displayed in a popup. Let’s take a look at this feature now as it can be a real timesaver when debugging.
Cancel the current debugger session by clicking the “Cancel” button in the debugger tool bar.
Add the following line of text in the program if it does not already exist.
Then run the debugger again be clicking the “Run” button in the tool
bar, then click “Step Into” repeatedly until the line you have just inserted
is displayed.
Move the mouse pointer over the variable name “myVar”. Note that nothing is displayed, as “myVar” has not yet been declared.
Click the “Step Over” button one more time, then move the mouse pointer over “myVar” again and you will see a popup appear containing the current value of “myVar”.
As you can appreciate, it is tedious to have to single step through a program repeatedly to inspect a variable like this. An easier way is to Set a Watchpoint on the variable.
Cancel the current debugger session by clicking the “Cancel” button in the debugger tool bar.
Move the mouse pointer over the word myVar then double click to select it.
Select the Debug | New Watchpoint menu item.
A special debugger comment will be inserted.
Now select “Continue” 
from the
debugger tool bar when the debugger is activated. This will cause execution
to continue until a Breakpoint or Watchpoint is hit.
Now, let’s say you want to inspect the current environment status at a certain point in the code. You would do this by setting a Breakpoint in your code.
Cancel the current debugger session by clicking the “Cancel” button in the debugger tool bar.
Select Debug | Clear All Watchpoints from the menu bar.
Now select Debug | Set Breakpoint Condition… and then select the “Condition” tab.
Specify the condition as used(“example”). This will cause execution to break after the USE EXAMPLE statement. You can specify any logical expression as the breakpoint condition.
Run the debugger again be clicking the “Run” button in the tool
bar.
Now select “Continue” from the
debugger tool bar when the debugger is activated.
Now click the “Status” button 
in the debugger
toolbar and the current environment status on the server will be displayed as
a text window in the Project Workspace.
You can also view the program execution history by clicking
the “History” button 
in the tool
bar.
If required, you can even view the log of packets that are being
transferred between the client desktop and the server by clicking the “Log”
button 
in the debugger tool bar. This can sometimes be useful when trying to debug
the order of events being fired from the Mirage .NET Client.
You can close debug windows by selecting Window | Close Debug Windows from the menu bar.
Cancel the current debugger session by clicking the “Cancel” button in the debugger tool bar.
Select Debug | Clear All Breakpoints from the menu bar.
Well that’s the end of this tutorial, if you have any questions be sure to browse through the integrated online documentation or visit the Recital Website at www.recital.com and use the Developer Center to share your ideas with other developers.
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