Tasks for developing an application

Designing the application

Application program design varies from place to place, and from one application to another.

Therefore, this information does not try to cover the early tasks that are part of designing an application program. Instead, it covers only the tasks that you are concerned with after the early specifications for the application have been developed. The tasks for designing the application are:

• Analyzing Application Data Requirements

  Two important parts of application design are defining the data that each of the business processes in the application requires and designing a local view for each of the business processes.

• Analyzing Application Processing Requirements

  When you understand the business processes that are part of the application, you can analyze the requirements of each business process in terms of the processing that is available with different types of application programs.

• Gathering Requirements for Database Options

  You then need to look at the database options that can most efficiently meet the requirements, and gather information about your application's data requirements that relates to each of the options.

• Gathering Requirements for Message Processing Options

  If your application communicates with terminals and other application programs, look at the message processing options and the requirements they satisfy.

For more information about designing a CICS® application, see CICS Transaction Server for z/OS® CICS Application Programming Guide.

Developing specifications

Developing specifications involves defining what your application will do, and how it will be done. The task of developing specifications is not described in this information because it depends entirely on the specific application and your standards.

Implementing the design

When the specifications for each of the programs in the application are developed, you can structure and code the programs according to those specifications. The tasks of implementing the design are:

• Writing the Database Processing Part of the Program

  When the program design is complete, you can structure and code your requests and data areas based on the programming specifications that have been developed.

• Writing the Message Processing Part of the Program

  If you are writing a program that communicates with terminals and other programs, you need to structure and code the message processing part of the program.

• Analyzing APPC/IMS Requirements

  The LU 6.2 feature of IMS TM enables your application to be distributed throughout the network.

• Testing an Application Program

  When you finish coding your program, test it by itself and then as part of a system.

• Documenting an Application Program

  Documenting a program continues throughout the project and is most effective when done incrementally. When the program is completely tested, information must be suppled to those who use and maintain your program.