Gen EDGE

We just upgraded to Gen 8.5 this past weekend.  I am in the Toolset Help, and it appears to me that when I get to a "leaf node" of a topic to see the description, there is no "back" button, so I have to start over again.  For example, if I open Help and use the Index option to go to "Functions in Action Diagrams", I can see Backward/Forward buttons on the right hand panel.  But if I click on Text, it shows me the list of Text Functions, but has no way to go back one page to then click Number.  I am pretty sure this worked correctly under Gen 8.0  Comments?

And as added info, what I am really trying to do is get a complete list of all functions available to use in action diagrams, and identify which ones can be used only in COBOL, which can be used only in Java/C, etc.

What displays on "Functions in Action Diagram" page:

What displays when I click on Text:

Hi Cathy,

Navigation within the help has been getting progressively worse like that, I agree.  I largely use either the Index or Search these days, when I need to do so.  You can hit Backspace to go back to the previous page you were viewing.

With respect to the functions and availability, my general rule of thumb is this: If it's mixed case, it's not available on any platform but Windows.  If it's a lower case function, it's available anywhere.

For what you're trying to find, I'd suggest going into the Index, go to the "F" section, and look for "Functions in Action Diagram Targeted For Windows Platforms" - it'll be near the end of the "F" section.  This lists all the mixed case functions, with a visual indicator beside them showing whether they're supported on C# or Java as well.

Looking at some of these, they'd be nice to be implemented on other platforms (eg Modulus), but given how long they've been around, I don't see that happening any time soon.

Hope this helps!

Thanks - will give it a try!  The big thing is we are in the midst of a POC to switch Gen code from CICS/COBOL/DB2 to Unix/Java/Oracle, and QAT consulting eluded to the fact that some of the Gen functions, particularly with dates, do not port over to distributed land.  We have only ever used lower case functions, but I want to find out now which of those might not work in Java.  So maybe there are exceptions to the general rule "If it's a lower case function, it's available everywhere"?  I continue my research. :-)

Note that you can right-click in the help page and select Back to return to the previous help page as well.

All lower-cased function names are supported on all platforms and mixed-case function names are supported on Windows GUI, Java and .NET.  The reason they are only supported on Windows GUI is because they were implemented as COM functions and Windows GUI includes code that allows COM support while Windows server load modules do not include COM support.  When Java and .NET support was added, most of the mixed-case functions were ported to those environments.  I'm thinking that file functions, for example, are probably not supported for Web clients in Java or .NET.

It might make for a number of good Ideas on the communities site to see if anyone is interested in particular functions being ported to other platforms (like, as was said, the Modulus function).

FYI, CA has recently (8.5 IR 3, I believe) added some capabilities to make the creation user-added functions easier in that function definitions can be defined in an XML file (<Gen Install Directory>\userfunctions.xml), displayed in the action diagrams functions lists and added to the model once it is actually used in an action diagram.  The layout of the XML file follows that used by QAT's Function Manager.  In fact, the new BLOB functions (allowing concatenation, substringing, and length of BLOBs as well as conversion of BLOBs to and from text) were implemented using this capability.

JCarter I'm presuming that user functions refers to this? User-Added Functions in Action Diagram - CA Gen - 8.5 - CA Technologies Documentation The onus is still on the user to implement them, and link them at runtime then.  Which probably requires adding it into a universal external library or modifying the build scripts.  It's not mentioned by you, but I'm presuming this cannot be used for implementing the mixed case functions on other platforms?  To implement them, we'd have to pick a different name?

Daniel_Stratton , you are correct that "user functions" does refer to the User-Added Functions in Action Diagram in the Gen documentation.  The onus is on the user, or on CA development in the case of the BLOB functions or other functions we may add in the future, to implement them.  For user functions, it is also necessary to include them in the link by adding them to the external library lists or modifying build scripts.  It would not be used for implementing mixed-case named functions on other platforms as those function definitions already exist in models and this functionality is geared towards making it easier to add new functions to models w/o the need for external tasks to add function definitions to models.  So yes, if the end user wanted to implement functions that Gen has already implemented on some platforms but not others, they would need to select a different name.