General Procedures

The procedures in this section provide the basic principles and steps for creating an application using Data Access. They are given for reference only and you should not attempt them now, since you will be doing them in the tutorial chapters that follow. The following is one possible order of procedure for creating an application using Data Access:

You are free to choose the order in which these steps are completed. For example, you could first create all your panels, then the application, and then integrate the panels. However, the advantage of creating the application first is that all paths of the panel data files are automatically relative to the application file.

Notes:

1. Applications and panels are created within the Main window. The current buffer determines the type of file that you are currently working on. The current buffer type is shown at the bottom of the Main window. When creating a new buffer, you must specify the type of buffer required. A submenu accessed via the New option in the File menu allows you to do this.

2. You can move between all the buffers that are currently loaded using the Window menu. The buffer currently being edited is displayed at the top of the list of buffers in the drop-down menu and also in the Main window title bar.

In the tutorial in this manual, we will be using the numbered procedure shown above. If you like, you can now go directly to the tutorial, which starts in the next chapter Introduction, or you can look over the general procedures that follow.