Editing IBM Informix-4GL (section)

==Description==
It includes embedded [[Structured Query Language|SQL]], a report writer language, a form language, and a limited set of imperative capabilities (functions, if and while statements, and supports arrays etc.).<ref>{{cite news |newspaper=[[Computerworld]]
|url=https://www.computerworld.com/article/2564435/websphere-tools-upgraded-to-ease-java-development.html
  |title=WebSphere tools upgraded to ease Java development}}</ref> The language is particularly close to a natural language and is easy to learn and use. The  Form Painter,  Screen Code Generator,  Report Code Generator (Featurizer) enabled adding custom business logic. It also had, as additional components a menu system, and a front-end [[GUI]] (graphical user interface) Generator.

The package includes two versions of compiler which either produce 1) intermediate byte code<ref>known as P-code, for Pseudo-Code, which ran interpretively</ref> for an interpreter (known as the rapid development system), or 2) [[C Programming Language]] code for compilation with a C compiler into machine-code (which executes faster, but compiles slower, and executables are bigger).  It is specifically designed to run as a client on a network, connected to an IBM Informix database engine service.   It has a mechanism for calling [[C Programming Language]] functions and conversely, to be called from executing C programs.  The [[Rapid development system|RDS]] version also features an interactive debugger for [[Dumb terminal]]s. A particular feature is the comprehensive error checking which is built into the final executable and the extremely helpful error messages produced by both compilers and executables.  It also features embedded modal statements for changing compiler and executable behaviour (e.g. causing the compiler to include memory structures matching database schema structures and elements, or to continue executing in spite of error conditions, which can be trapped later on).