The Premiere Component-Based Development Environment for Windows® 9X and Windows NT®
Visual Smalltalk Enterprise provides a component-based, object-oriented environment for application development that enables point-and-click, graphical assembly of reusable components. Through visual programming (the ability to specify the look and action of an application) VSE allows developers to create mission-critical client and server applications that provide flexible and easily updated solutions for the enterprise. VSE provides features that allow developers to build client/server applications that are easily maintained and modified. These include:
- Windows 9X functionality
- A timesaving component architecture
- A maintainable and extensible application structure
- Team development support
- Distributed application support
The Drag-and-Drop component assembly provides rapid application assembly and OLE
component integration.
Designed for Windows 9X
Visual Smalltalk Enterprise is one of the first client/server tools designed for the Windows 9X environment. Its 32-bit compiled performance and visual programming power lets developers create high-performance, scalable applications with ease. VSE supports OLE2 services that enable OLE container applications and provide OLE functionality such as drag-and-drop, compound storage and OLE Controls. In addition, OS/2® developers can build applications that are portable between Windows and OS/2 and can incorporate the SOM/DSOM capability for distributed objects.
Visual Smalltalk Enterprise supports new Windows 9X common controls including:
- Rich Text Editor — enables unlimited text length and supports .rtf files and multiple fonts and colors.
- Tree View — displays lists of items that have a hierarchical arrangement, such as directories or compound documents.
- Toolbar — builds toolbars that can be either attached to a window or stand-alone.
- Status Window — shows various states and help text.
- List View — allows developers to maintain and sort multicolumn lists as well as represent information as icons or detailed text.
- Slider — allows developers to choose a discrete value from a range of values.
- Progress Indicator — indicates the progress of a task.
- Tool Tips — enables tips (pop-up fields that display a text hint) to be attached to each control.
- Tab Sheet — allows developers to build multipage dialogs.
Integrated version control, configuration management and powerful browsers enable
easy organization of applications.
Timesaving Component Architecture
Visual Smalltalk Enterprise allows developers to create and distribute components easily. Developers can control the footprint of their applications by dynamically loading and unloading components as needed, allowing developers to deploy complex applications with much less memory. Developers can use Smalltalk to build business objects and combine these with prebuilt interface components and OLE controls. Since completed applications are distributed as binary portable components, developers can distribute the processing between clients and servers — offloading processing from the client and enabling the use of batch operations.
Developers can control access to repository entities easily.
Maintainable and Extensible Application Structure
Many 4GL tools let developers build their applications quickly but lack the tools for easy maintenance. With VSE, developers cannot only build their applications fast, but they can also maintain them easily with a powerful tool set. Developers can use code browsing tools to understand the structure of their applications and to build textual descriptions. They can also organize and document their work using scenario descriptions, a high-level method for grouping and documenting events and messages.
Team Development Support With Visual Smalltalk Enterprise
Visual Smalltalk Enterprise extends VisualSmalltalk's functionality by supporting large development teams with version control and configuration management, for reliable and repeatable builds. In addition, VSE's full-featured browsers enable developers to better document, structure and maintain code and to automate routine tasks. Access control allows developers to specify revision locking policies to create, read and delete file revisions using a graphical interface.
Nested Part Explosion View allows developers to view the high-level structure of
applications and their components.
Distributed Application Support
Visual Smalltalk Enterprise allows developers to complete high-performance applications that distribute Smalltalk logic across clients and servers. Using TCP/IP, VSE's communications between client and server systems enable high-performance client/server applications and connectivity to VisualWorks® server applications. VSE also supports asynchronous API calls which enable developers to continue Smalltalk processing while completing nonSmalltalk functions, such as database queries.
WindowBuilderPro/V
Product Family for VisualSmalltalk and Visual Smalltalk Enterprise