OUG - Online User Guide

In many ADS/Online applications, developers are constantly being faced with the requirement of providing comprehensive and up-to-date documentation about applications. These online systems are becoming more and more a major part of all data processing systems. Many of these are very sophisticated in nature and provide many of the features traditionally performed in the batch environment. These online systems are operated by a mixed variety of users including end-users, system analysts and/or programmers. In order to be able to correctly utilize the systems, users require detailed, accurate and timely documentation.

Typically, large quantities of hard copy documentation are provided in order to meet these requirements. However, the use of hard copy has many drawbacks. It is difficult to maintain the documentation in the face of the many rapid developments and continuous changes being made to online systems. It also does not allow users to quickly find all relevant information required during the normal course of their work. The Online User's Guide (OUG) was developed to resolve these problems.

OUG executes within an CA-IDMS ADS/Online environment. OUG is a dictionary driven Help facility that provides users with an easy mechanism to document their systems. It allows users to view documentation about the dialogs in a system as well as the map data fields associated with the dialogs and the messages displayed by the system. Different Help can be maintained and viewed by different classes of users. All of this documentation, or Help information, may comprise a comprehensive Application Information Guide.

Another unique feature of OUG is the Pick-a-Value function. It allows users to pick values for the map data fields from those
fields' help text. This is useful for fields with a specific list of allowable values.

The OUG product is dictionary driven; it stores all Help text into the Integrated Data Dictionary (CA-IDD). This provides a significant advantage to applications in that the OUG information is tightly integrated with all of the existing information already stored in the IDD.