Setting Up a NOF Interface for NOF-Initiated Transactions

Use the following task descriptions as a guide to setting up a NOF interface when your NOF program initiates transactions for input to an application.

Customizing the NOF Skeleton Program

A skeleton COBOL program is provided on your Release media, and is loaded to the Dictionary pack during configuration of the Agile Business Suite Software. The program name is:

NGEN28/SAMPLE/NOF

You can use this program as a basis for writing your own NOF program, which must be compiled. Refer to Compiling and Configuring the NOF Program for more information.

You can make the following types of modifications to the NOF skeleton program:

Recovery
Logic should test GL-MSG-RECOVERY-IND. A non-zero value indicates that the transaction is in recovery. Refer to How to Handle Recovery and Duplicate Protection for more information.
Duplicate Protection
Refer to How to Handle Recovery and Duplicate Protection for more information.
Logging
Track GL-MSG-STNNAME if logging is required.
Administration (colon) Commands
Your logic can control access to Administration commands. Specify station access level by using GL-MSG-SUBSYS, as follows:
```
 	0 - Standard
	1 - ODT
	2 - Controller
```
Adding to or changing the inputs or outputs of the NOF program
Refer to Input to the NOF Program and Output from the NOF Program under Creating a NOF Program for more information.
Language support code
If your interface is not required to support a multilanguage environment, you might remove the language support code. Otherwise, you need to enhance the language support code in the skeleton. Currently, this code loads in the available languages, but then assumes that only English is to be used. To change this so that all transactions use a language other than English, or so that each external station can use a different language, include your own code.
You can store station language in the station table.
Station Table support code
If you have no requirement to store dialog indexes within your NOF program, you can remove all the code associated with the station table. Consider this carefully, as by storing and sending dialog indexes, you can improve performance. Refer to the comments within the code of the NOF skeleton program.
Add Formatting code
The skeleton NOF program assumes that Ispec screen data is correctly formatted for transmission to the application or to the external system. If this is not true, you need to add code to provide the correct formatting. To assist you with this, you can copy in the necessary Ispec formats from the LINCOFF file.
You can choose to generate a full LINCOFF file by setting to True the Generate Full LINCOFF configuration property under the Environment category for the Segment in Builder.
Transaction Management Code
NOF should not send another input from a station to the application until the last input for that station has been replied to by the application. If this is not managed by your external stations, you must add code to your NOF program to ensure this does not occur.
It might be appropriate to store indicators in the station table to manage this. The &&&&& message signals the end of output from a transaction.
COMS Error Management Code
The NOF skeleton program provides checks for a subset of possible COMS errors. You can enhance the level of error checking and error handling that is performed.
DS Update and Retry AUTO
Setting the attribute GL-MSG-ERROR-IND to 2 causes the COMSTP program to terminate abnormally (DS) and the Automatic Entry to be retried.

Compiling and Configuring the NOF Program

Compile your NOF program under the name required. If you want to use the defaults, then compile the program as window/NOF (where window is the name of the window for your application), as this value matches the COMS Configuration file defaults that are provided.

To use names other than the defaults, you must modify the COMS Configuration file system COMS/CONFIG/NOF, so that the program title and COMS program name match those you require.

To configure your NOF environment, you must load the NOF COMS Configuration file by using COMS UTILITY, and selecting the Load option. Ensure that you have made any required modifications to the file before loading.

If you have EAE NOF programs that uses the LINCOFF file generated from AB Suite and require the data items in the AB Suite LINCOFF file to be created in the same format as EAE, set the BuildMCPLINCOFFold format MCP builder registry key and build the application.

For 32-bit:

\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
	\SOFTWARE
	 \Unisys
		\System Modeler
		 \Features
			\Builder

For 64-bit:

\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
	\SOFTWARE
 \WOW6432Node
	 \Unisys
	  \System Modeler
		 \Features
		  \Builder

To create the LINCOFF data names in the NGEN object-oriented format, rename or delete the BuildMCPLINCOFFoldformat MCP builder registry key.

Changing Logic

Changes to logic would only be required if special handling for NOF transactions was required. By testing the value of the Glb.Style and Glb.GUI built-in attributes, you can identify a transaction as a NOF transaction. Refer to the Agile Business Suite Programming Reference Manual for more information on these built-in attributes.