Borland International, Inc.

Kevin Lane Brown

William Monroe Turpin

Steven Ward Bogrett

A system for creation and completion of goal oriented electronic forms creates a graphical image data file which defines: a graphical image of a form for display and printing; a graphical image of tree branches, tree nodes, and conclusions in association with fields of the form; reading and writing links between form fields and data sources and destinations; and links to other forms which, with the original form, comprise a related stack of forms. The system includes a form creation mode and a run time mode. The trees are defined by an application developer using the form creation mode to establish both qualitative and quantitative relationships between the various fields on the forms thereby providing the basis for the goal oriented prompting for the application user using the run time mode.

Graphical programming system and methods for assisting a user with

Graphical programming system and methods with user interface

A development system having methods for maintaining data integrity of information stored as a data record in a database table with information displayed on a screen device is described. An exemplary method for maintaining data integrity, without continuous exclusive locking of a shared data record, includes the following steps. First, the system reads at least one field value from a database table, while the table is available to others (i.e., accessed with share access). This field value is displayed on screen to the user, whereupon the user may enter new information (i.e., new field value). In the event that the user has entered new information, the method performs the step of re-reading the field value from the database table. Accordingly, the method can determine whether the just-entered value differs from that stored in the database. In the event that the two differ, the method can update the database with the just-entered information displayed on screen or, alternatively, refresh the information displayed on screen with that which is now stored in the database table.

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Scotts Valley, CA, United States of America

Kevin Lane Brown