AIS Shell

One of the challenges of AIS development is evaluating the response. A form request requires accurate parameter settings and deciphering the returning payload is not straight forward. Designing a form request often requires a trial-and-error approach of the request parameters until the response returns the desired result.

My Roadmap separates the AIS development from the application Flow. The requests, or E1 Business Process is executable independently from the application Flow. This is a consequence of the principle that an AIS application is executing an existing E1 Business Process – just with different user experience.

The Redux DevTools have been my stable request and response evaluation tool for Angular development. Its only drawback is that it’s embedded in the application and therefor entangled with the AIS development. In other words, designing an E1 Business Process for purchase order receiving for example, requires an application Flow development – or at least one dummied up.

The publishing of Celin.AIS opened up a perfect opportunity to bring it into use for an AIS command-line utility.

The aisShell solution is still in early development, but the initial functionality should give an idea where I’m heading with this.

The sv command defines the AIS server parameters and makes connection after prompting for authentication.

The fm command defines the form parameters and submits it to an authenticated server connection. The response can subsequently be dumped out to a text file for later analysis.

The form accepts action parameters with the fm d a (form define action) command. When writing this an old question popped up. What is the response when a form request selects a grid row? The P4310_W4310I request has the Find on Entry flag set to true which means it automatically populates the grid. The form actions are SelectRow and DoAction on the Select button. The response is no longer the requested form as in the previous example, but P4310_W4310B.

At the risk of exposing my inner nerd – I found this quite exiting!