Home Education Publications Resources Library Contact P O Box 812785 Wellesley, MA 02482 Toll Free 1-800-553-6678 Tel 1-781-239-0822		Workshops and Seminars The Education Division of Meristem Systems provides comprehensive workshops and seminars in support of software tools from Software AG. Our courses cover Natural, Construct, PREDICT, ADABAS and more. Two firm principles guide us in our course offerings. First, our materials have to be the best available anywhere. Secondly, our instructors must define the standard of excellence in the Software AG training community. It is important to us that each of our instructors have a thorough knowledge of the material being presented and, at the same time, significant hands-on experience with Software AG products in real situations. It is equally important that an instructor from Meristem appreciate the job of having students comprehend and successfully apply the concepts being presented. A Meristem instructor must be a real teacher. Consistent with these two principles, we offer the core courses listed to meet the needs of developers and end-users alike. We are ready to send our instructors to your site to present these courses at very cost effective rates. Call us whenever you wish to discuss training solutions or when your are ready to schedule the best training available for your Software AG tool set. These are the major courses provided by Meristem Systems with many more listed in our course catalog available on request. Natural Series Natural Programming Fundamentals Workshop Intermediate Natural Programming Workshop Advance Natural Programming Techniques Reporting with Natural Natural Construct Series Natural Construct Applications Workshop ADABAS Series Inside ADABAS - A Concepts and Facilities Course PREDICT Series Introduction to PREDICT

Inside ADABAS ADABAS is a flexible and powerful database management system. To take full advantage of this power, it is important to understand its facilities and the basics of its internals. "Inside ADABAS" is designed to answer the question, "What do I need to know about ADABAS before I can design and implement files and systems that use ADABAS effectively and efficiently?". This course covers the major features of ADABAS data sets and their interaction while emphasizing those features which directly affect data base performance. Students learn with inclass exercises how the data is stored, accessed, and modified. Other topics are included discussing the data dictionary, security, and ADABAS utilities along with restart and recovery procedures. Back To Index | Back To Top Natural Programming Fundamentals Workshop Natural is today's leading fourth generation programming language. Business today demands the ability to retrieve, manipulate and report information in a timely fashion. Natural provides programmers, analysts, end-users, and managers with an effective means to perform these and more functions efficiently. This course covers the Natural command environment, program, map and data area editors and sufficient programming statements to build simple Natural programs. The emphasis is on the Natural environment and effective use of the editors to create functional Natural objects. Students leaving this course will be well prepared for the intensive Building Natural Applications course. Back To Index | Back To Top Intermediate Natural Programming Workshop If your shop has been using Natural for any length of time you probably recognize that the key to productivity improvements from Natural is learning how to use this tool effectively. This intermediate Natural course is designed to improve the skills of a programmer who has learned basic reporting and transaction processing. The emphasis of this course is on screen dialogs. Some of the most powerful features of Natural relate to its screen handling capabilities such as windows, help routines and processing rules. To use these features effectively, a programmer must be comfortable with the Map Editor, and that is a primary focus of this class. In addition, there is further exploration of array processing, communication techniques among Natural objects, finer points of break processing, and utility statements not covered in the Fundamentals course. Samples and examples emphasize Structured mode. Back To Index | Back To Top Advanced Natural Programming Techniques Natural has embedded in it some very sophisticated functionality. To exploit the cost savings of this product, programmers need to be fluent in many of these advanced techniques. This course, formerly Advanced Natural Programming Techniques, can help programmers, ADABAS and DB2 alike, extend the range of functionality in on-line and batch applications. In addition, with the techniques presented in this course, programmers and designers can build applications with greater speed and efficiency. This hands-on session presents many tips for using the full power of Natural. This course will satisfy programmers looking for a better way to do things in Natural. Back To Index | Back To Top Natural Query and Report Writing Workshop Fourth Generation languages are making a significant impact on the data processing community outside the traditional programming environment. Managers, new Natural end-users and programmers can use this course to grasp the concepts of Natural commands and statements and show them how to manipulate libraries, programs and modules. Selected Natural commands, programming statements and the Program Editor are explained in detail. Emphasis is placed on keyboard usage, field/record/file concepts, access techniques and basic programming techniques for data retrieval and reporting. Program examples and student exercises exemplify statement and variable usage as well as program structure. Back To Index | Back To Top Natural Construct Applications Workshop Emerging from the popularity of Natural as a 4GL, Natural Construct provides the programmer/analyst/developer a tool to build applications with more rapidity than with Natural itself. Reducing the necessity to learn the language entirely, Construct draws upon the ideal of modeling to generate programs. From a few specifications, entire applications may be Constructed, from beginning to end, cleanly and efficiently. For those applications where Construct doesn't quite meet all the needs, User Exit models are provided for modification and implementation a the working suite of modules solving the business solution. Further techniques allow direct coding of modules to be included in the overall application, coded from within Construct or coded externally. These techniques and others are examined extensively throughout the lecture and workshop. Back To Index | Back To Top Introduction to PREDICT Handling the volumes of information in todayÕs data bases requires an integrated data dictionary and tools to manage this facility. PREDICT manages the design, development, documentation and maintenance of ADABAS and Natural applications interactively. With the introduction of Natural and Natural Construct, PREDICT’s role becomes more important in managing the application development environment. This course provides an in depth look into PREDICT and the Data Dictionary. Generation, incorporation, retrieval and maintenance of views are covered extensively along with the active cross reference facility. Integration of program descriptions and processing rules with Natural are discussed in detail. Topics á PREDICT Overview: Modes of operation; PREDICT Functions ; Active cross reference, Data dictionary administrative services, Generation feature, Incorporation feature, Maintenance feature, Retrieval feature, Data dictionary overview; The Preprocessor: Role and benefits; Usage: JCL & program á Active Cross Reference: Capturing data; Activating and benefits á Extended List Command: Capturing data; Activating and benefits: PREDICT and NSS, Turning XREF on, Generating DDMs, Purging files, Incorporating DDMs & Natural programs, Disallowing functions; Extending PREDICT: PREDICT file layouts, User reporting & exits, Modifying PREDICT menus, User defined entities and record types, Processing rules (generation and incorporation of rules), Program descriptions. Back To Index | Back To Top B>In general, these courses represent the core of our workshops. Detailed outlines are available illustrating the content of each course of instruction. Any course may be customized for each presentation - we'll work with you and the outlines to "cut and paste" and build a class that meet's your specific training needs. There are many more workshops and seminars available. Just call for our current catalog or speak with our education coordinator directly at our toll free number 1-800-553-6678.