About this Tutorial

As a first-time user, you are recommended to work through this tutorial to obtain a basic understanding of specific features of the Natural programming environment.

The layout of the example screens provided in the tutorial and the behavior of Natural described here can differ from your results. For example, the command or message line may appear in a different screen position, or the execution of a Natural command may be protected by security control. The default settings in your environment depend on the system parameters set by your Natural administrator.

This document covers the following topics:


Prerequisites

To perform all steps of this tutorial, the Adabas demo files EMPLOYEES and VEHICLES must be installed as well as the Natural example objects. If they are not installed, ask your administrator to install them.

About the Sample Application

This tutorial illustrates how an application can be structured as a group of modules. It is not intended to provide an example of how an application should be built.

After you have written your first short Hello World program, you will write a program which reads employees information from a database and displays the output. The user will be prompted to enter a starting name and ending name for the output. You will enhance your program step by step by moving specific parts of your program to external modules. When you have completed all exercises of this tutorial, your application will be structured as follows:

Application structure containing the modules Map,       Helproutine, Program, Local Data Area (pertaining to Program), Global Data Area, Subroutine,       Subprogram, Local Data Area (pertaining to Subprogram), and Parameter Data Area.

You can now proceed with your first exercise: Getting Started with Natural.