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ND-210729 — UNIQUE II (SIBAS, for ND-100)

Status: IN-PROGRESS — no PD sheet or floppy located; documented from a real, detailed PI sheet with a worked example

Field Value
ND article number ND-210729
Product name UNIQUE II — SIBAS for ND-100 (one of 8 target/database variants — see below)
Functional category 4th-generation application tools (DIALOGUE family)
ND doc-category tag 60 General [curated]
CPU target ND-100
OS requirement SINTRAN III version J or later; SIBAS-II version E or later (version B prerequisites)
Related products ND-211005 UNIQUE Text System (hard prerequisite for any UNIQUE product, see ../ND-211005/README.md)

The UNIQUE / DIALOGUE-1 product family — many article numbers, two independent PI sheets

Two independent PI sheets cover this family: ND-210729-A1-EN.md (UNIQUE II / UNIQUICK feature description, with a worked example) and ND-211202-A1-EN.md ("DIALOGUE-1" — the umbrella package, with a full Product Specifications table of article numbers and additional modules neither the ND-210729 sheet nor this catalog had seen: UNIQUE START (database definition), UNIQUE XTRA (reports/queries), UNIQUE DOCUMENTATION (system/user documentation), and runtime-only variants).

Product ND-100/110 ND-500/5000
DIALOGUE-1 (full package: UNIQUE II SIBAS + UNIQUICK SIBAS + UNIQUE Upgrade) ND-211202 ND-211203
DIALOGUE-1 Runtime ND-211204 ND-211205
UNIQUE Upgrade (UNIQUE START + XTRA + DOCUMENTATION) ND-211400 ND-211401
UNIQUE II, SIBAS ND-210729 (this doc) ND-210730
UNIQUE II, SIBAS Runtime ND-211083 ND-211084
UNIQUE II, ISAM ND-210731 ND-210856
UNIQUE UNIQUICK, SIBAS ND-210871 ND-210872
UNIQUE UNIQUICK, ISAM ND-210869 ND-210897

Discrepancy between the two source sheets, not resolved: the ND-210729 sheet lists ISAM variants as ND-210731/ND-210895 (ND-100/ND-500) and UNIQUICK-ISAM as ND-210896/ND-210897. The ND-211202 sheet instead lists UNIQUE II ISAM as ND-210731/ND-210856 and UNIQUICK ISAM as ND-210869/ND-210897. The two sheets agree on ND-210731 (UNIQUE II ISAM, ND-100) and ND-210897 (UNIQUICK ISAM, ND-500), but disagree on the other two ISAM article numbers. Both are presented above without picking a winner — treat ND-210895/ND-210896 (from the earlier sheet) and ND-210856/ND-210869 (from this later, more detailed sheet) as unresolved alternates until a PD sheet or floppy settles it.

ND-211250 (a floppy you have, containing DOC-MAIN/DOC-SIBAS/DOC-XTRA/DOC-LIB/ INSTALL-UNIQ:PROG and real :MODE scripts) is very likely UNIQUE DOCUMENTATION — its file prefix DOC- matches this module's real description above almost exactly ("produces system documentation and user documentation... database documentation, cross-reference lists") — but this module has no explicit standalone article number in either sheet read, so this is a strong inference, not a confirmed identity. See ../ND-211250/README.md.

No PD sheet or floppy image has been located for any of the ND-210729-family article numbers themselves (only ND-211250, likely a different, related module, has one) — this entry is PI-sheet-only.

What UNIQUE II is

A 4th-generation application-development tool — not a program generator, but a single PROGRAM that interprets an application description you write: a screen-form layout, plus a mapping from form fields to database items and the relations/functions between them. Runs on ND-100 or ND-500, against either SIBAS-II or ND ISAM (see ../ND-210073/README.md). [PI]

Building a UI — the real, worked example

Source: the PI sheet's own worked example, verbatim. [PI] An application is a text file with two parts: a screen layout (start-form...end-form) and a database mapping (start-fields...end-fields):

+-----------------+
| Start-form      |
|                 |
| CUSTOMER        |
|-----------------|
| Number | Name   | Shortname   |
| A..... | A..... | A...........|
| A..... |        |             |
...
| end-form        |
|-----------------|
| start-fields    |
| data-base-name = ORDRBASE
| register-name = CUSTOMER
| field = "CUSTNO" key
| field = "NAME" alternative-key letter-type (UPPER)
| field = "SHORTNM" alternative-key letter-type (UPPER)
| field = "ADDRESS1"
| field = "ADDRESS2"
| field = "ADDRESS3"
| field = "TELNO"
| field = "CONTPERS" alternative-key letter-type(UPPER)
| field = "PAYCOND"
| end-fields
+-------------------+

Reading it: each A.... run in the form is a field placeholder (the manual's own typeset convention) — its actual type, length, and display format come from the data dictionary, not from this file. A real shipped sample application confirms the actual on-disk placeholder is ^ followed by a repeated type letter (^N=numeric, ^A=alphanumeric), not A.... or the ° seen in the second example below — see the real, complete CUSTOMER-REG-A00:UNIQ file decoded in ND-10730. In start-fields, data-base-name/register-name name the SIBAS realm this form is bound to (a "register" here = a SIBAS realm — see SIBAS-DATABASE-PROGRAMMING.md), and each field = "<item>" line maps one database item to one form position, optionally marked key (the realm's primary/CALC key) or alternative-key (a secondary index — letter-type (UPPER) forces uppercase comparison). Uppercase words in the fields section are database/realm/ item names; UPPER itself is the one exception (a type keyword, not a name).

Once running, the form supports navigation (F/N/P/L — first/next/previous/last record), direct search by key or alternative key, direct screen printout, and sorted printout of record lists. Control flow inside an application uses IF/ELSEIF/ELSE/ENDIF and BEGIN/END sequences — special-purpose FORTRAN/COBOL routines are only needed beyond that.

UNIQUE UNIQUICK — the menu-driven generator for the same output

A companion product (the four right-hand-column article numbers above) that produces the same kind of application file, but built by picking database → register → keys → fields from successive on-screen menus with function keys, instead of writing the text file by hand — "With only 6 keystrokes your application is ready to run." [PI] The generated file can then be run directly by UNIQUE II, or hand-edited with standard ND editors (PED, NOTIS-WP).

A second worked example, from the ND-211202 "DIALOGUE-1" sheet — confirms the syntax, minor variations

Source: ../../Product-Info/ND-211202-A1-EN.md, verbatim. [PI]

start-fields
database-name = ORDRBASE
table-name = CUSTOMER
field-name = "CUSTOM" key
field-name = "NAME" letter-type(UPPER) alternative-key
field-name = "SHORTNM" letter-type(UPPER) alternative-key
field-name = "ADDRESS1"
field-name = "ADDRESS2"
field-name = "ADDRESS3"
field-name = "TELNO"
field-name = "CONTPERS" letter-type(UPPER) alternative-key
field-name = "PAYCONID"
end-fields
Same shape as the §"Building a UI" example above, with two vocabulary differences worth noting (both sheets describe the same real product, so treat these as synonyms, not a version difference confirmed either way): table-name/field-name here vs. register-name/field in the other sheet's example. This second sheet also documents the interactive form-layout convention: each field position is marked with a ° character when designing the form on-screen (vs. this catalog's other example's A placeholder character) — again, likely just two different scans/eras of the same underlying convention, not confirmed which is authoritative.

Documentation

Provenance

PI sheet only — no PD sheet or floppy image located for this product in this repo's archive or the floppy reference catalog consulted.

Parent: ../README.md (Software catalog)