Is there anybody interested in writing about CoolGen? -- SavasAlparslan

I did a search on Amazon for Cool:gen, Cool-gen or Cool gen. It did not find any books. It did suggest that I might have meant Cologne, Collagen or Cool Gene. :)

A search on Google found only 6190 references to CoolGen. I would be interested to know how many developers are believed to be using this product?

If you've not come across CoolGen before, see http://www.duick.com/gen/ (this is a peer support website for Gen developers). Note that the official name for the product is AllFusion Gen and it is sold by Computer Associates. Many old-timers still refer to the tool by one of its earlier names (Advantage Gen, COOL:Gen, Composer, IEF or  Information Engineering Facility).

What is coolgen? I couldn't tell from the coolgen site. 

Ans: Gen is a CaseTool (Computer Aided Software Engineering) - I believe the current buzz word is model-driven design which Gen has had for nearly twenty years.

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One of our clients uses COOL:Gen. This was a Texas Instruments product called IEF (I don't remember what that stands for) (Information Engineering Facility?), and was later bought by Computer Associates to rot in the land of the forgotten. In general, Cool:Gen is a 4GL - the language is a kind-of COBOL/Clipper/BASIC mix - which uses a database to store its meta structure and then code-generate the business functions, which run on the server and either a fat or thin client component. To my knowledge, those that bought IEF (and now have Cool:Gen) were mainframe shops. I've never heard of or seen IEF/Cool:Gen run on any other platform.

Needless to say, COOL:Gen isn't very standard, very few shops use it, and since CA now owns it, doomed to fester and dissolve into the bit netherland. -- JeffPanici

(Speaking of netherlands, COOL:Gen is used by the IRS of the Netherlands: http://www.belastingdienst.nl/ict/ -- JorritWiersma)

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See: WhoUsesCoolGen

Jeff, basically, not a bad description of COOL:Gen. One problem with your comment though, COOL:Gen runs on many platforms, in many different environments. I personally have worked with it in MVS, NT, UNIX, and TandemComputers platforms/environments. It is one of the most powerful and complex development CASE tools ever developed. -- CarlShea

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I wouldn't call it a 4GL, nor a CASE tool. Its meta data is actually very cool, but undervalued. The idea behind is beautiful but because of changing so many hands (TI, Sterling, CA) it is hardly being kept up to date. Latest version which generates J2EE compliant code is very promising... .NET is also coming (but when?)... -- Robin

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I used IEF, CoolGen and I have written some stuff in Java. Let me tell ya, it's much easier to get something up and and running in gen than it is with java. All the hoopla about java as a development platform is miss leading. It's just another programming language, whereas gen is actually an integrated development platform. -- LC

I heard about COOL:Gen; it will work any environments like NT, MVS, UNIX... it is amazing to generate code for an application. Can I know the functionality for the cool:gen in any environment? -- Chandan

I have been working on COOL:Gen for about 2 yrs now, and my experience with it is wonderful. It makes porting your code from one platform to another just a matter of code generation.

I have been developing ClientServer architecture based applications and haven't worked on mainframes, though I feel that the tool is made for mainframes. It has so many features for mainframes.

I am an architect on a project with mainframe components that include both CICS and web service components generated using CoolGen on z/OS. I was very surprised (and impressed) to learn that it uses a generated model similar to what we find in modern MVC architectures. -- Asad
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CategorySoftwareTool