tablesONLINE provides an interface to user-written exit programs that can perform additional validation and/or data transformation tasks. Calls to such programs are automatically made whenever a user performs specific actions in the tablesONLINE editor. Exits can perform checks or coordinate updates on multiple rows in a table. For instance, creating a row for a new employee may require changes to the row for that person’s supervisor as well as new rows being inserted into other tables.
Exit programs can also be used to extend tablesONLINE to handle any data that fits logically into tabular format, like data in VSAM files or database records. With such extensions, tablesONLINE becomes a powerful data entry and data maintenance tool, even for applications that do not directly use tableBASE.
Such exit programs allow the developer to make independent choices of data representation for display and storage. This can lead to large savings in data processing resources, machine power, and staff time, without sacrificing user convenience.