The Basic Product
VAST Platform (VA Smalltalk) is a rich development environment with tools for every aspect of the development cycle from prototyping to deployment.
What tools are available to develop software in VAST Platform?
As you might expect, the VAST Platform development environment has tools to browse, create and edit objects for use in your application. It also has tools to locate programming errors and correct them. The Smalltalk User Guide introduces you to these tools.
If you want to know how to organize your objects into digestible components which you can link together in prerequisite chains and assemble into complex applications, you should read Smalltalk User Guide. This book introduces you to tools which allow you to manipulate software components.
The VAST Platform tools are highly customizable. Chances are, if you don’t like the way the development environment looks, you will be able to change it. The Smalltalk User Guide and the VA Assist Pro User Guide explain how you can change how the tools represent the code components and the code itself.
VAST Platform supports visual programming as well as textual coding techniques. Getting Started introduces you to the tools to construct an application from visual parts. Visual Programming User Guide tells you how to modify parts or create new ones as well as how to locate errors in visually constructed software components.
For the textual coder, VA Assist Pro User Guide will show you recent improvements in the code editor which will help to streamline your coding by suggesting complete text for partially entered code and by color highlighting to illuminate the meaning of code passages.
What objects are available to deploy in an application?
Programmer Reference describes the subsystems in the Smalltalk development environment which give the basic functionality to any application developed in VAST Platform. The book also describes how an application written in Smalltalk can communicate with other applications using standard protocols.
Visual Parts Reference is an encyclopedia of parts (visual and nonvisual) available as part of the basic visual programming environment for use in constructing applications.
How do I tune my application’s performance?
Smalltalk User Guide shows how to analyze the runtime performance of code using the Performance Workbench and Memory Monitor.
How do I tailor my application to accommodate multiple languages?
VAST Platform provides the means to allow your application to adapt to different languages and regional norms through standard National Language Support (NLS) protocols. You can find information on NLS concepts, the steps involved in developing an application which adapts to different localities ant the tools to drive the process in the Programmer Reference.
For visual programming, additional information is in the Visual Programming User Guide.
Smalltalk User Guide discusses ramifications of internationalizing an application on the process of packaging and deployment.
How do I package and deploy my application?
Read Smalltalk User Guide: Packaging, unloading, and analyzing code if your application has a user interface. If your application has no interface, read Server Guide: Packaging server applications. If you built your application from parts, you may be able to use the simplified packaging steps found in the Visual Programming Guide.
How do I administer a VAST Platform installation?
The Installation Guide tells you where EMSRV and its accompanying utility program EMADMIN are installed, what command line options are available to you when starting the programs, what errors and messages are reported. This is the first place to go when setting up team programming.
The Smalltalk User Guide tells how to perform ongoing team system administration.
Last modified date: 01/07/2021