Visual Age will package components with the necessary OLE or OpenDoc enablers at build time. The product also provides data-access classes for access to and management of enterprise data. Developers can generate SOM objects and Distributed SOM objects directly from the compiler or the Data Access Builder. Other useful utilities include online help, code samples, and tutorials. IBM's Visual Builder, common to Visual Age for both languages, enables a building-block approach for developing an application's user interface and the underlying business and application models.
Developers assemble applications from visual and nonvisual parts.
Nonvisual parts model application logic and do not have inherent visual representation. OLE controls are built into Visual Age using OLE class libraries as a starting point. The composition editor in the Visual Builder is used to lay out the visual and nonvisual parts, as well as to make connections between the parts. If you have a comprehensive set of parts, programming in Visual Age can be fairly easy. Much of the linking of code and components can be done simply by drawing lines between them.