Printer Friendly
The Free Dictionary
990,779,646 visitors served.
?
Dictionary/
thesaurus
Medical
dictionary
Legal
dictionary
Financial
dictionary
Acronyms
 
Idioms
Encyclopedia
Wikipedia
encyclopedia
?

fourth generation language

   Also found in: Acronyms, Wikipedia 0.03 sec.
(language)fourth generation language - (4GL, or "report generator language") An "application specific" language, one with built-in knowledge of an application domain, in the way that SQL has built-in knowledge of the relational database domain.

The term was invented by Jim Martin to refer to non-procedural high level languages built around database systems.

Fourth generation languages are close to natural language and were built with the concept that certain applications could be generalised by adding limited programming ability to them.

When given a description of the data format and the report to generate, a 4GL system produces COBOL (or other 3GL) code, that actually reads and processes the data and formats the results.

Some examples of 4GL are: database query language e.g.SQL; Focus, Metafont, PostScript, S, IDL-PV, WAVE, Gauss, Mathematica, and data-stream languages such as AVS, APE, Iris Explorer.

?Page tools
Printer friendly
Cite / link
Email
Feedback
? Mentioned in ? References in periodicals archive
 
Custom Report Formats: In addition to basic data generation, RowGen can create structured, custom-formatted output reports using text files (job scripts) written in the same explicit fourth generation language (4GL) as IRI's CoSORT package.
Migration away from a fourth generation language such as COOL:Gen is just one aspect of a much larger modernization trend in the IT world," said Dreier.
New Media, has worked as a consultant at Citibank, JP Morgan and Hewitt Associates developing financial analysis systems, fourth generation language interpreters and benefit management systems.
 
Encyclopedia browser? ? Full browser
 
 
Encyclopedia
?

Disclaimer | Privacy policy | Feedback | Copyright © 2008 Farlex, Inc.
All content on this website, including dictionary, thesaurus, literature, geography, and other reference data is for informational purposes only. This information should not be considered complete, up to date, and is not intended to be used in place of a visit, consultation, or advice of a legal, medical, or any other professional. Terms of Use.