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Introduction

In this tutorial, you will learn how to build a simple dynamic web site using EGL. This site has two pages: one to display a list of records in a database and another to allow users to change the data from one of those records.

This tutorial might require some optionally installable components. To ensure that you installed the appropriate optional components, see the System requirements list.

Enterprise Generation Language (EGL) is a development environment and programming language that you can use to write full-function applications quickly, freeing you to focus on the business problem your code is addressing rather than on software technologies.

Learning objectives

In this tutorial, you learn how to complete these tasks:

Time required

To complete this tutorial, you will need approximately 90 minutes. If you decide to explore other facets of EGL or dynamic web sites while working on the tutorial, it could take longer to finish.

Skill level

Introductory

System requirements

To complete this tutorial, you need to have the following tools and components installed:

Prerequisites

You will be best prepared to complete this tutorial if you have programmed in any third- or fourth-generation language such as COBOL, RPG, or a client/server language, and if you are familiar with these topics:

Tutorial application

In this tutorial, you will create an EGL web project and import a sample database. You will then create a simple EGL web application that works with this database. The first of the two web pages in your application shows a list of customers from data stored in the database:

Page that lists several rows from a database

The second web page shows details about one customer and allows users to change those details:

Page that updates one row

EGL is the language that you use to manage the interaction between users and the database:

Each of the two pages pictured above are controlled by EGL logic parts called Handlers, which control the runtime interaction with a user interface. In this case, the Handler parts are JSF Handler parts, Handler parts specialized to control a single web page at run time. A JSF handler's function is invoked by a user click, and the function in turn invokes a library function that you create. The result is that a user working at a web browser can view and alter data stored in a database.

As shown in this tutorial, EGL promotes code reuse in several ways:

EGL also provides the Data Access Application wizard, which you will use to create the elementary code necessary to access a relational database. This wizard creates EGL parts that have these specific purposes:

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