AD301: Introducing the Composite Application Container Framework - Lotusphere 2009

Introducing the Composite Application
Container Framework
● Bob Balfe | Senior Technical Staff Member – Composite Applications |
®
IBM
AD301
● Brian O'Gorman | Architect – Composite Application Editor | IBM

Agenda
 Introduction to Containers
 Landmarks 101
 Container Tooling
 The Browser Container
 The Notes Containers
 The Symphony Spreadsheet Container
 Building your own containers
 What's next?
 Q&A



Composite Application Background
 A role based application framework where decoupled components
can communicate through declarative connections (wires)
 Primarily used to integrate heterogeneous technologies
 Lotus Notes to SWT, Web to Lotus Notes, SWT to ..., etc
 Target audience for “application assembly” is technically savvy lines
of business users
 Was great on paper :)
 Provide a clear and consistent component model where all
components can communicate with well defined properties
(outputs) and actions (inputs)
 The primary value add is using existing resources (applications) in
new context and sharing data from those applications with each
other



Introduction to Containers – Why a new component type?
 WSDL is very hard to understand
 Current component model does not work well for complex
containers:
Applications like web applications with more than one page or form
Host based applications with many screens
Spreadsheets with more than one sheet
 Creating new components is cumbersome
Must create new Java code, new WSDL, deploy feature and plugin




What is really wanted/needed
 The ability to define new components with no programming and no
WSDL
 Have new components created from basic XML – ie. extension points
 These new components need to be 100% compatible with existing
components
 Let low level assemblers create new components using plugin.xml
 Let higher level assemblers create new components with CAE.


What is a “container”?
 A container is a new type of view part that can display not only an
application but applications with many pages (states) and pieces to
it.
 For instance, we have a web browser container that exposed general
actions and properties.
 Setting the URL
 Setting the HTML text
 Publishing the URL
 Etc.

 These containers can define properties and actions at different
landmarks within the contained content.
 For instance, define actions and properties across many pages in a web
application


What is a landmark and a landmark identifier?
 The term landmark is taken from navigation.
 Think of what “landmarks” you know that tell where you are at
 For instance
 The statue of Liberty tells you are in New York City


 The landmarks here are the same concept
 They tell the container it is in a particular place in the containing
application.


(cont)  A container definition states what its landmark identifier is.
 The landmark identifier tells the container what reference to use to identify
different states (or places) of the component.
 These states can then have actions applied to them by referencing the value
returned from the container using the landmark identifier – the returned
value is the landmark.

 The landmark is the value returned by the container using the
landmark identifier
 All landmark values are basic strings
 Regular expressions and wild-cards are also supported
– http://www.ibm.com/*


(cont)  A container definition states what its landmark identifier is.
 The landmark identifier tells the container what reference to use to identify
different states (or places) of the component.
 These states can then have actions applied to them by referencing the value
returned from the container using the landmark identifier – the returned
value is the landmark.

 The landmark is the value returned by the container using the
landmark identifier
 All landmark values are basic strings
 Regular expressions are also supported

Landmark

Property Name spaces for common containers
 The new framework introduces the concept of shared property spaces
 This enables multiple instances of a container type to share the values
across them
 You can optionally set the namespace for a specific component using the
advanced property - “com.ibm.rcp.composite.container.namespace”
 This name space will be used to store the and retrieve the property for the specific
component.
 By default the name space is the perspective ID, so all same types of components
share properties on a given screen

Container Tooling
 Generic Landmark Editor provider by Composite Application Editor
 Define landmarks & operations
 Landmark, operation, and field suggestions provided by container

Container Tooling
 Import / Export landmark definitions
Exports the extension xml for the landmarks
 Automatically populated with pre-defined landmarks & operations –
from plugin.xml
Configure and distribute a container with some base
landmarks
Application assemblers can extend this – e.g. For different
regions



The Browser Container
 Included in Lotus Expeditor 6.2 & Lotus Notes 8.5
 Easy component creation for complex web browser applications
 For instance:
 We have a web application where there are many pages and in those pages
are different forms that can be filled out.


Page 1
Page 2
Page 3


Expense Form
Travel Form
Requisition Form


 Each form is on a different page within the overall web application
 Let’s say each form has a “Name” field on each page.
 We want to expose that Name field to be set from other components


 There is a problem though:
 On Page 1 the field “Name” has the HTML name attribute set to “nameField”
 On Page 2 the field “Name” has the HTML name attribute set to “Requester”
 And on Page 3, it is not even a field, it is highlighted text in bold

 What we want to do is expose “Name” as a field that can be set by or
queried by other components (publish or receive)

 We can handle this by specifying the landmark identifier as the URL
or the Title of the page
 This makes the landmark results unique so we can define how “Name” is
handled on the three different pages.


 There is a problem though:
 On Page 1 the field “Name” has the HTML name attribute set to “nameField”
 On Page 2 the field “Name” has the HTML name attribute set to “Requester”
 And on Page 3, it is not even a field, it is highlighted text in bold

 What we want to do is expose “Name” as a field that can be set by or
Landmarks
queried by other components (publish or receive)

 We can handle this by specifying the landmark identifier as the URL
or the Title of the page
 This makes the landmark results unique so we can define how “Name” is
handled on the three different pages.

Name Properties

The Browser Container – sample extension xml
<landmark expression="Expense Form">
<event id="contentComplete">
<receive field="name:txtName" property="Name"/>
</event>
</landmark>
<landmark expression="Travel Form">
<receive field="name:name" property="Name"/>
</event>
</landmark>
<landmark expression="Requisition Form">
<publish
field="xpath://*[@id=‘profileInfo']/attr[@name='cn']/value"
property="Name"/>
</event>
</landmark>


Demonstration time – The Browser Container!
®

The Notes Containers
 Web Delivery – Notes View Container & PIM View Container
 Extract data from Notes views as properties, right in CAE
NO WSDL!
No database modifications
 Each property is published individually upon selection
 Multiple selections are delimited. “00” by default
Delimiter can be overridden
 Hide the complexity of Landmarks and the underlying configuration


The Notes Containers – Notes View Container
 Based on the re-parent technology
 Can contain any Notes View
 “Formula” is supported to extract information from view
 Uses Java back-end classes to access the data. Document is opened.



The Notes Containers – Notes View Container
 Inline landmark configuration
 Define new properties to publish, right in the container in CAE
Type/Select Property
Name
Field Type
(only formula) Formula Create
Property
Create new wire
Save
Configuration

The Notes Containers – PIM View Container
 Based on Notes Java views (CSI Views)
 Supports both “Formula” and “Columns” to extract data
 Formula uses Java back-end classes – document is opened
 Columns use new Java view framework – document not opened, data exists
 Supports 5 default configurations
 Inbox, Calendar, Contacts, Todo, Recent Collaborations




 Selecting a configuration generates a new landmark configuration
 i.e. Default set of properties to extract & publish

 Define new properties to publish, right in the container in CAE

Type/Select Property
Name
Field Type
(formula/column) Formula Create
Property
Create new wire
Save
Configuration

Demonstration time – The Notes Container!
®

The Symphony Spreadsheet Container
 Extra information from & publish information to spreadsheets
 Support cells and cell ranges (and named ranges)
Publishing data from
a web application to
spreadsheet to
populate a chart!

The Symphony Spreadsheet Container

Type/Select
Property Name
Cell
Range
Create
Action
Create new wire
Save
Configuration
Action
Publish/Receive Display Fields

?? Demonstration time –
®
The Symphony Spreadsheet Container! ??

Building your own containers
 You can build your own container using our new container API's
 Your container would extend our base abstract class
 com.ibm.rcp.composite.container.core.AppContainer
 The container is initialized in the createPartControl method
 container = new MyContainer(this);
 The container can tell the core what events it supports for landmarks:
 Override getAvailableEvents(), example:
– public Map getAvailableEvents() {
– Map map = new HashMap();
–
– map.put("selection", "selection");
–
– return map;
– }

Building your own containers (cont)
 Even the actions can be completely custom for your container
 Make them make sense for your container
 For instance, if you only support a “Publish” action then you could do this:
 public Map getSuggestedActions() {
 Map map = new HashMap();

 map.put(AppContainer.PUBLISH, AppContainer.PUBLISH);

 return map;
 }

 You can publish and receive data easily
 No Property Broker API's are needed
 You would implement the following two methods:
● public void publish(String name, String field, LandmarkEvent event,
Object context)
● public void receive(String name, String field, LandmarkEvent event,
Object context)

 You would then call the core containers publishProperty() method to publish
the data to the broker

● publishProperty(name, value.toString());



 Each area of the composite application editor can be customized by
your container
 Components can add their own tabs for editing configuration

What's next?
 Lotus Expeditor 6.2.1
 Symphony Spreadsheet Container
 Host On Demand (HOD) Container
 Lotus Notes 8.5.1 (above plus...)
 Notes View Container
 PIM View Container
 Notes Document Container
 Building your own
 Ability to provide your own Landmark Editor tab in CAE
 Ability to provide your own inline landmark configuration UI


Further resources
 IBM Composite Applications wiki
http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/compappwiki.nsf
 Lotus Expeditor Infocenter
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/ledoc/v6r2
 Bob's Blog
http://blog.balfes.net
 IBM Lotus developerWorks
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus
 IBM Lotus Application Development Overview
http://www.ibm.com/software/lotus/appdev/

 Questions
?
Thank you for joining us, and please remember to fill out the feedback forms.
For more demos and information come see us in the Meet The Developers lab.

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AD301: Introducing the Composite Application Container Framework - Lotusphere 2009

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