What's new

This page contains recent and forthcoming additions of note to Model 204 documentation.

Model 204 Version 7.5

Version 7.5, the next release of Model 204, follows the recent acquisition of Sirius Software and integrates the Sirius and Janus software products into the Model 204 nucleus. One of the more exciting results of the integration is Simple Objective User Language, or SOUL. SOUL adds object-oriented programming to, and replaces the name of, User Language. It comes with no additional cost, and it is backward compatible with existing User Language applications.

SOUL

Here are some of the new SOUL features:

• Mixed case User Language support
• Generic User Language sorting, searching, and subsetting facilities
• Improved syntax for setting/retrieving large object (LOB) values (directly to/from longstrings)
• Enhanced printing and auditing statements
• Implicit concatenation
• The Assert and Loop Next statements
• A macro language
• Data types:
  • Longstring (including image string items > 255 bytes)
  • Unicode
• Full OO programming capabilities including:
  • Class and object definitions, methods, public/private class variables, inheritance, polymorphism, etc.
  • Support for exceptions such as Try, Catch, and Throw statements
  • Support for named parameters
  • Support for method variables, that is, variables that can be used to dynamically invoke functions or subroutines
• Shorthand right-side assignment operators
  • %a = @ + 1
  • %a = @ * 1
  • %a = @ / 1
  • %a = @ :div(1)

64-bit enablement of the Model 204 infrastructure

By moving Model 204 “Above the Bar,” scalability, performance, and growth are limited only by the system architecture and memory. With this release of Model 204, 64-bit addressing becomes the de-facto standard for all subsequent versions. This may bring new challenges to customers who have written assembly language functions for use within Model 204, and Rocket Software has prepared a new set of service offerings to help accommodate upgrade and conversion needs.

Repeating field groups

Model 204 supports non-relational, denormalized data structures. Many Model 204 sites have enjoyed significant cost and performance benefits from efficiently processing multiply occurring fields. This processing is enhanced by the introduction of Repeating Field Groups, which let you view and process groups of fields as logical entities.

Expanded file-record limit

In version 7.5 of Model 204, the record limit per file increases from sixteen million records to forty-eight million records.

New debugging tools

Developing web and screen applications that use Model 204 is made easier by newly purchased debuggers: Janus Debugger, TN3270 Debugger, and SoftSpy.

Release notes

For a detailed summary of version 7.5 of Model 204, view the release notes.