JBA Guidelines

Description

Screencap from a notebook test window on a very early version of Guidelines, possibly Beta.

C++ development environment and an application generator for OS/2 that could also generate code for MS Windows. Introduced in 1992 and originally written as a tool for developing GUI front ends for the AS/400 software products from the JBA Holdings company but was extended into a general business application development tool.

You build your application in a GUI designer then write the back end in either C++ or in a proprietary event driven fourth generation language called JOT, Guidelines then generated C++ code from your front-end design and JOT code and you compiled it with your choice of C++ compatible compiler suite, or had Guidelines do it for you. In addition the company offered optional Client/Server back ends for AS/400, Unix SQL servers and ODBC.

While Guidelines did nothing in the OS/2 or Windows marketplaces it survived as an in house tool and was used for most PC system development at the company, however a number of people hacked the Guidelines package to act as a GUI builder for other systems, the first version of Visual Ada Developer used the package as its front end for instance.

Version

Latest OS/2 version: Version 3.21 (Designer 4.07a) 1995-Oct-16.
Known fixpack: Mod65 - 1995 - There was almost certainly a later version than this of both the fixpack and the program itself, but we have not been able to find it.

Prerequisites

One of the following C++ compiler products:

Early versions of the software required IBM C SET++ 2.01 or IBM VisualAge 3.0 C++ OS/2 and the OS/2 Developers Toolkit to compile the Guidelines output, later versions will not support C SET.