The Model Concept: Nonprocedural Programming for

This text contains description of the syntax and semantics of the language, MODEL, and techniques for its use. MODEL is a fifth-generation computer language. It is equational and non-procedural. (What these terms mean will be made clear to you as you begin to get involved in the MODEL system.) In this chapter, we shall discuss the value of the language. MODEL is a tool for systems and program design and development. Like most computer languages, the MODEL system comes with a compiler which is used to receive and analyze the language statements. But as we shall see later on, the whole process of analysis and coding is radically different in the MODEL system from programming methods in current practice. Using today's conventional technology, it is necessary for the analyst to have knowledge of how a computer works internally. Otherwise, the analysis is often unusable by the programmers. To express data processing requirements that are translatable into a procedural language requires knowledge of how a computer executes the solution of the problem Non-procedural languages are problem-oriented and independent of knowledge of how the computer works. MODEL eliminates the need for transfer of information from analyst to programmer. The MODEL system uses the computer to perform program design and coding automatically. In traditional systems design, afte