These notes describe the release of Natural Business Services (NBS) V8.2. The following topics are covered:
Note:
For information on NaturalONE code and service generation, see
NaturalONE Code Generation and NaturalONE
Service Generation.
For information on software prerequisites, see Prerequisites. For information on hardware prerequisites, see Operating Environments.
This section contains important information you should read before installing this version of Natural Business Services. The following topics are covered:
The Visual Studio, Natural for Windows, and stand-alone Eclipse clients (plug-ins and add-ons) are not supported in this version of Natural Business Services. The only supported client is NaturalONE, which uses the RPC server method of calling business services. It is strongly recommended that you migrate to this client for future development.
Note:
Although you can continue to use existing generated/created
applications against the DISPATCH server, you will not be able to maintain
these applications using a version 8.2 server installation.
The CDRANGE subprogram, which is used by generated object-browse subprograms to calculate the minimum and maximum values for queries that contain a range, is now obsolete and has been replaced by the CDRANGE2 subprogram. CDRANGE2 is identical to CDRANGE, except it can handle longer lengths in the key fields. Both CDRANGE and CDRANGE2 will be shipped with Natural Construct V5.3 and V8.2, which will allow existing applications and object-browse subprograms generated in Natural Construct V5.3 server environments to use CDRANGE and object-browse subprograms generated in NaturalONE V8.2 and Natural Construct V8.2 server environments to use CDRANGE2.
If you previously used Natural Business Services or Natural Construct to generate code against DB2 tables that were defined with the use of the NATL option in Predict, you may have seen L@ fields generated in the views and PDAs used to represent these files. Beginning with this version, the L@ fields will no longer be included in the generated code.
When installing this version of Natural Business Services (NBS) over an existing version in mainframe environments, the INT* modules will now automatically invoke the CVSETVR utility to set the product version number. Previous versions of NBS required you to do this manually.
To support Natural field/variable sizes introduced in Natural V4.2, the CNUELNX subprogram has been changed to accommodate the new sizes and changes to the Natural editors. In addition, the word "Dynamic" can now be used in a length field. Further changes were made in Natural Construct V8.2 to support another size change. In addition, the new Object-Maint-Enhanced-Subp model has been introduced to support dynamic fields in the data PDA. This new functionality will allow longer Alpha fields to be represented in the PDA as DYNAMIC, so only relevant data will be sent across the network. For more information, see Object-Maint-Enhanced-Subp Model Now Available.
This section describes the new features and enhancements in this version of Natural Business Services and Natural Construct. The following topics are covered:
This section describes the new features and enhancements in Natural Business Services V8.2. The following topics are covered:
This version contains several error corrections. New functionality is not provided.
This section describes changes to Natural Construct in this version of Natural Business Services. The following topics are covered:
This section describes the new features and enhancements in Natural Construct V8.2.1. The following topics are covered:
The Object-Maint-Enhanced-Subp model has been included in this version of Natural Business Services to handle fields that have a varying amount of data. Using this model, the following options are now available:
Generate large fields into the object PDA as dynamic fields
Maintain large object (LO) fields by the generated subprogram
Notes:
The following table lists the guides in the Natural Business Services documentation set:
| Document | Description |
|---|---|
| Natural Business Services Installation on Mainframes | Describes the installation of Natural Business Services on mainframe platforms. |
| Natural Business Services Getting Started | Provides information to help new users of Natural Business Services. |
| Natural Business Services Administration | Describes how to set up and manage environments
for Natural Business Services applications. This
guide is intended for:
|
| Understanding Natural Business Services | Provides information on how Natural Business Services creates business services. |
| Natural Business Services Natural Plug-in | Describes the Natural plug-in supplied by Natural Business Services. This guide is intended for developers who are familiar with Natural for Windows and the Natural Development Server (NDV) and want to use the Natural Business Services plug-in to create and maintain business services. |
| Natural Business Services Tools and Utilities | Describes the development tools and utilities provided by Natural Business Services: the Broker Driver program, NBS Tester, and Server Monitor. |
| Natural Business Services Subprogram-Proxy-Client Model | Describes the Natural Business Services Subprogram-Proxy-Client model. This model generates a subprogram proxy to access a Natural subprogram. |
| Natural Construct Administration and Modeling | Describes how to access and use the Administration subsystem of Natural Construct. |
| Natural Construct Object Models | Describes the Natural Construct Object models. These models generate the Natural subprograms used by Natural Business Services. |
