U2 Programmers Framework Creators

It seems everyone Universe, UniData, or D3 shop we have talked to in the past few years has been creating their own frameworks. These programmers thought they had to create the frameworks for everything they wrote including screening and printing routines. This article, fortunately, is only about printing frameworks.

A good definition for framework from "http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/framework":

"In computer systems, a framework is often a layered structure indicating what kind of programs can or should be built and how they would interrelate. Some computer system frameworks also include actual programs, specify programming interfaces, or offer programming tools for using the frameworks. A framework may be for a set of functions within a system and how they interrelate; the layers of an operating system; the layers of an application subsystem; how communication should be standardized at some level of a network; and so forth. A framework is generally more comprehensive than a protocol and more prescriptive than a structure."

Whether this frameworks are used extensively or just with new code, this something that a lot of U2 sites continually propagate them.   Without documentation for these frameworks and the fact this framework is used only at a single site this means outside organizations such as U2logic must figure out what all of this code does and what it can do.   Some of the UniBasic frameworks are 20 or 30 years old and make no sense today.  What a programmer or company to do?  Easy answer is stopping using this madness.

At U2logic, we believe, in the open source model. Many sites have asked why we are using the Business Intelligence Reporting Tool (BIRT) as a framework for printing reports.  First, this was not a framework written by U2 people. Secondly, this framework is used by an estimated 7 million programmers. Thirdly, we can use internet resources like Stackoverflow.com to help us with BIRT questions or problems. Lastly, our UniBasic code has been reduced by at least 60% per program.

About a year ago we created an open data access to BIRT for Universe and UniData. This allows U2 programmers to access the world's most used open source report writer. We have converted about 100 reports to date for our applications. We have found our UniBasic code is so inconsequential to the report procedure. All UniBasic subroutines do is get the data in a JSON format to BIRT to format the report. No more sorting or special code on the UniBasic side to hide columns or add columns of data. All of these functions are handled on the BIRT side. This framework is updated at least once a year through the Eclipse foundation IDE.

For our clients of our applications and our clients of our tools, this means they have an open source frameworks for printing.  Should they need programming staff they will have a printing framework prospective employee's and other support organizations can have knowledge on. Sounds like a win-win for U2 marketplace.