Screen generator

A screen generator, also known as a screen painter, screen mapper, or forms generator is a software package (or component thereof) which enables data entry screens to be generated declaratively, by "painting" them on the screen WYSIWYG-style, or through filling-in forms, rather than requiring writing of code to display them manually. 4GLs commonly incorporate a screen generator feature. They are also commonly found bundled with database systems, especially entry-level databases. A screen generator is one aspect of an application generator, which can also include other functions such as report generation and a data dictionary. The earliest screen generators were character-based; by the 1990s, GUI support became common, and then support for generating HTML forms as well. Some screen generators work by generating code to display the screen in a high-level language (for example, COBOL); others store the screen definition in a data file or in database tables, and then have a runtime component responsible for actually displaying the form and receiving and validating user input.