The Non-Formatted Input/Output (NOF) interface is a means by which an external program can send input to, and receive standard Agile Business Suite output from, your application. Although output is not formatted, input must be in Agile Business Suite format, as defined in your system/LINCOFF file, which might be created when you build your application (you can choose to generate a full LINCOFF file by setting to True the Generate Full LINCOFF configuration property for the Segment under the Environment category).
NOF is thus a flexible method for communicating with an application, where multiple transactions can be in process at the same time. With the NOF programmatic interface, both participants in the interface can initiate transactions. The NOF interface method has the following features:
An external terminal or program can initiate a transaction to an application, and the application returns a response.
An application can initiate a transaction to a program and wait for a response from the program.
NOF enables you to input transactions into an application from practically any source and receive any resulting output in a predetermined but unformatted layout.