Who Uses FOCUS?

FOCUS is designed to serve the needs of both end users and application developers. These two groups have different needs and different levels of data processing experience. End users generally use FOCUS for reporting purposes and to run applications created by others. Application developers create computer systems and design the applications that end users use. Since most FOCUS users quickly advance to designing their own applications, we have a few suggestions for beginners.

If you have never used FOCUS, begin with the FOCUS Report Writing Primer and use the TableTalk and FileTalk tutorials to become familiar with how FOCUS handles basic reporting and data source definition tasks. These facilities present formatted screens from which you select options to create reports and describe data sources.

Depending on your needs and the particular FOCUS options installed with your system, you may also require additional Information Builders publications, including those that describe special adapters. These adapters may access data sources created by other systems or facilities or may allow you to access FOCUS data sources from programs written in other programming languages.