PROGRAMMING CODE BLOCKS

The prejob, predevice, prepage, and precopy subroutines (and their associated postxxx routines) open the world of Business Basic programming to the report and form designs.  With a full programming language at your disposal, it is possible to customize and manipulate the forms, and to interact with other applications and devices, or with the operating system.

An experienced Business BASIC programmer (ProvideX is the actual dialect used) typically performs the programming of these subroutines.  However, programmers experienced in other languages, particularly other dialects of Basic, can easily learn the fundamentals of Business Basic and perform these programming tasks.  Several of the sample forms include some programming, and there is a complete reference guide available from the ProvideX web site: www.pvxplus.com.  In this manual, we have provided some basic (no pun intended) information that will assist developers experienced in other programming environments.

It should be noted that an UnForm job is not a stand-alone pvx program.  Instead, it is a combination of a an UnForm job wrapper written in static pvx code, and user-defined code blocks, which are executed at particular times as subroutines while the job progresses.  Therefore, code blocks act as subroutines and not full pvx programs.  In addition, some pvx syntax has been overridden to ensure compatibility with previous versions of UnForm, and many UnForm-specific functions have been added so that code blocks can perform UnForm-specific tasks.  Lastly, the user-interface features of pvx are not available, as UnForm jobs run in background and are not connected to a user screen.