Welcome
Developing
Developing EGL applications
Enterprise Generation Language (EGL) is a programming language that you can use to focus on business problems instead of software technologies. Within the Rational® development environment, you can use EGL wizards and other tools to write complex applications with minimal effort.
EGL Language Reference
The EGL Language Reference covers the fundamental use of the language, including its concepts, syntax, and keywords. This volume is intended for a developer writing EGL applications with some experience in procedural programming.
Applications with user interfaces
Rich UI programming model
Rich UI validation and formatting
Widgets that can be used as controller views
Widgets of several types can be used as controller views.

Overview
Getting started
Installing
Upgrading and migrating
EGL Code Accelerator for IBD
Developing
- Model driven development of EGL code
- Generating source code from UML models
  You can use transformations to create source code from a UML model. First you must create a transformation parameters file and then apply those parameters to a model.
- Generating the EGL Dependency Graph from EGL projects
- Generating Source Code from OpenAPI Documents
- Developing EGL applications
  Enterprise Generation Language (EGL) is a programming language that you can use to focus on business problems instead of software technologies. Within the Rational® development environment, you can use EGL wizards and other tools to write complex applications with minimal effort.
  - How to use this documentation
  - Additional information about EGL
    The most recent EGL documentation is in the IBM Business Developer documentation.
  - EGL Programmer's Guide
    The EGL Programmer's Guide covers using EGL within the Eclipse Integrated Development Environment (IDE), as well as some of the common programming tasks that EGL developers perform.
  - EGL Generation Guide
    The EGL Generation Guide covers the process of converting EGL code to Java™ or COBOL source code, including the processes and the files involved. This section is intended for a developer who will generate or deploy EGL applications.
  - EGL Language Reference
    The EGL Language Reference covers the fundamental use of the language, including its concepts, syntax, and keywords. This volume is intended for a developer writing EGL applications with some experience in procedural programming.
    - General syntax
    - System data parts
    - User-defined data parts
    - Logic parts
    - Correspondence between a JSON string and an EGL variable
      This topic describes the EGL record that corresponds to a JavaScript™ Object Notation (JSON) string. Other topics describe the functions (serviceLib.convertFromJSON() and serviceLib.convertToJSON()) that are used by a Rich UI developer to convert JSON data to or from a variable, as may be necessary to access a third-party REST service. A failure in either function causes a RuntimeException.
    - Correspondence between a JSON string and an EGL variable for zOS and IBM i
      This topic describes the EGL record that corresponds to a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) string. This topic describes the functions—serviceLib.convertFromJSON() and serviceLib.convertToJSON()—that are used by an EGL developer to convert JSON data to or from a variable either for zOS or IBM i systems. A failure in either function causes a RuntimeException.
    - Special considerations for JSON support on IBM i:
    - Correspondence between an XML string and an EGL variable
      This topic describes the EGL record that corresponds to an Extensible Markup Language (XML) string. Other topics describe the functions (serviceLib.convertFromXML and serviceLib.convertToXML) that are used by a Rich UI developer to convert XML data to or from a variable, as may be necessary to access a third-party REST service.
    - EGL statements
    - EGL core system libraries and variables
    - Accessing data in EGL
      Whenever you access a data store in EGL, the data goes into a record.
    - Applications with user interfaces
      - Enumerations for user interface properties and fields
      - Common UI statements
      - Common UI properties
      - Validation properties
      - Handler part
        A handler typically includes both variables and functions. It is used for basic processing and for user interaction.
      - Rich UI programming model
        Restrictions for Rich UI names
        As well as EGL naming conventions, certain names in Rich UI have additional restrictions.
        Rich UI Handler
        Rich UI widgets
        Creating a Rich UI application with multiple handlers
        Event handling in Rich UI
        Rich UI validation and formatting
        Widgets that can be used as controller views
        Widgets of several types can be used as controller views.
        Dynamic loading in Rich UI
        Instead of deploying all the Rich UI handlers into a single HTML file, you can control the downloading of Rich UI handler code at run time. For large applications, you gain significant advantage in scalability and performance.
        Rich UI date and time support
        Form processing with Rich UI
        Rich UI provides a way to implement the kind of form processing that is traditional in business software. The processing depends on the Rich UI controller, which is a definition that relates a single view (a widget) with a single model (a data field). For details on Rich UI controllers, see Rich UI validation and formatting.
        Use of properties files for displayable text
        Themes to use with your Rich UI application
        Themes provide a consistent appearance for all the Dojo widgets in your Rich UI application.
        Browser history
        Rich UI Infobus
        Non-Infobus communication between Rich UI handlers
        Rich UI debugging
        Rich UI drag and drop
        Rich UI job scheduler
        The Rich UI job scheduler is a timer that lets you invoke a customized function after a specified number of milliseconds. You can schedule multiple jobs and can cancel them in response to runtime conditions.
        Rich UI memory management
        Two memory-management functions are available for avoiding memory leaks. The leaks slow your application and can cause the browser to crash.
        ExternalType for JavaScript™ code
        With EGL, your Rich UI application can access non-generated JavaScript™. You might be making general logic available, for example, to provide a random number generator. Or you might be referencing a non-EGL widget, for example, to allow use of a Dojo widget inside your code.
        Extending Rich UI
      - DojoLib
        The DojoLib library includes constants and validation functions used by the EGL Dojo widgets. The library is not a system library, and its use has prerequisites.
      - DojoMobileLib
        The DojoMobileLib widget defines constants that are used by EGL Dojo mobile widgets.
      - Reference to widgets
      - EGL reports
      - Text UI
        A text UI application presents a text-based user interface similar to that of a 5250 or 3270 terminal.
      - Web transaction support in EGL
        Use EGL web transactions to migrate VisualAge® Generator web transactions to EGL.
    - VisualAge® Generator compatibility
    - Appendices
    - Importing product-supplied projects
      You can click a link to download the current version of Rich UI projects. The capability is useful if you deleted a project or want a clean version.
  - Rational® COBOL Runtime Guide for zSeries®
    This manual provides information about customizing and administering the IBM® Rational® COBOL Runtime.
  - IBM Business Developer EGL Server Guide for IBM® i
    This manual provides information about customizing and administering EGL Server for IBM® i on the host.
  - Generation for VSE Feature Reference
    This reference manual provides z/VSE-specific information about developing and generating EGL programs in the VSE environment.
- Source code analysis with code review
  With code review, you can create configurations of coding rules for EGL source code. You can then run the configurations to check the source code for consistency with the rules.
- Responsive Design Support in IBD
  What is Responsive Design? Responsive design is an approach for creation of web pages that automatically scales its content and elements to match the screen size on which it is viewed. So, instead of designing multiple websites for different devices with variable screen sizes, we can design just one website that scales up or down automatically, to match the device it’s being viewed on.
- Containerizing an EGL RUI Application
Samples
Troubleshooting and support
EGL runtime error messages
Reference
Glossary
Using the help
Notices for IBM Business Developer documentation

Widgets that can be used as controller views

Widgets of several types can be used as controller views.

The following table lists those widget types, along with the types of models that were tested for each.

Table 1. Widgets and the related model values
Widget	Type of model
Checkbox (for selection state)	BOOLEAN, STRING (TRUE or FALSE)
Combo	BIGINT, BOOLEAN, INT, NUM, SMALLINT
DojoCheckBox (for selection state)	BOOLEAN, STRING (TRUE or FALSE)
DojoCurrencyTextBox (for currency input)	BIGINT, INT, MONEY, NUM, STRING Do not use formatters or unformatters with widgets of this type.
DojoDateTextBox (for selected date)	DATE, STRING Do not use formatters or unformatters with widgets of this type.
DojoRadioGroup (for button text)	INT, SMALLINT, STRING
DojoTextArea	STRING
DojoTextField	STRING
DojoTimeTextBox (for selected time)	STRING, TIME Do not use formatters or unformatters with widgets of this type.
HTML (for content in the HTML tag)	STRING
Hyperlink (for displayed text)	STRING
Image (for alternate text)	STRING
List	BOOLEAN, INT, SMALLINT, STRING
PasswordTextBox	STRING
RadioGroup (for button text)	INT, SMALLINT, STRING
TextArea	STRING
TextField	BIGINT, BOOLEAN, DATE, INT, MONEY, NUM, STRING, TIME, TIMESTAMP

If you want to develop your own EGL widget types, be aware that a widget type can be included in the preceding list only if the type has a text property, as is the case of the TextField widget, or is defined with data-conversion detail, as described in @MVCView.