4GL

from The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)
fourth generation language
4GL

   <language> (4GL, or "report generator language") An
   "application specific" language, one with built-in knowledge
   of an {application domain}, in the way that {SQL} has built-in
   knowledge of the {relational} database domain.

   The term was invented by Jim Martin to refer to
   {non-procedural} {high level languages} built around
   {database} systems.

   Fourth generation languages are close to {natural language}
   and were built with the concept that certain applications
   could be generalised by adding limited programming ability to
   them.

   When given a description of the data format and the report to
   generate, a 4GL system produces {COBOL} (or other 3GL) code,
   that actually reads and processes the data and formats the
   results.

   Some examples of 4GL are: {database query language} e.g.{SQL};
   {Focus}, {Metafont}, {PostScript}, {S}, {IDL-PV}, {WAVE},
   {Gauss}, {Mathematica}, and {data-stream languages} such as
   {AVS}, {APE}, {Iris Explorer}.

   (2004-04-01)