The primary goal of the Single Point of Development (SPoD) approach is to provide a development interface that enables software engineers to develop Natural applications for any platform using only one integrated development environment (IDE) of choice: NaturalONE, or Natural for Windows which includes Natural Studio.

The essential features are:

• Remote File Manipulation
  You can manipulate (for example, move, copy) program objects, regardless of location.

• Remote Editing
  You can retrieve Natural source files transparently from the target environment, edit them at your workstation and then save them to the target environment. The GUI supported dialogs of the editors provide significant advantages over the character-based editors.

• Remote Compiling
  You initiate the compilation process from your workstation by issuing commands to the target environment.

• Remote Debugging
  The debugger available with the IDE can be used to debug applications which execute in a target environment that can be located on the same system or in Natural remote environments.

• Object Locking
  When you access a remote development server, an object locking mechanism prevents concurrent updates. Locking information is kept in the development server file.

• Output
  Maintenance of character-based applications often involves testing output to terminals. During debugging from the IDE, a terminal emulation window or a window of the Natural Web I/O Interface appears automatically for that purpose. This feature is also available when you are using a utility with a character user interface.

  Note:
  Natural Development Server for Windows supports only the Natural Web I/O Interface.

  The Natural Web I/O Interface is able to display information which contains Unicode characters. The terminal emulation window is not Unicode-enabled. The window which will appear at your site depends on the parameters which have been set on the Natural development server.