As this
blog is more for Conceptwave technical discussions, so starting with Metadata
that we have in Conceptwave briefly.
Metadata Objects :
We have lot many on Metadata and below covers on most used in day to day
applications.
- Data Types
- Data Structures
- Documents
- User Interfaces
(Presentation UI)
- Finders
- Global Scripts
- Processes
Data
Types :
As we
know, in any programming language we need to define some variables to do some
operations. Conceptwave also contains different types of inbuilt data types
like String, integer, Boolean, double etc. In addition to it, we can
define our own data types too and assign the values to that data type
dynamically (from Finders etc or from Code tables etc) or statically (from
enumeration values etc).
Defining own datatype:
1. Dynamic Way: Suppose, if we wanted to
create a one country data type display as a drop down values dynamically based
on new countries addition or update or deletion below are the steps.
Step 1 : In your UI write the logic to get the results (we can use script
finder or SQL finder based on requirement) and set the parameter with some
parameter name using Global.setSessionParameter.
Step 2: Create one finder and get the session parameter details using Global.getSessionParameter.
Step 3 : Create new data type and in the properties of this data type, we will
find one option to select the finder which is created in Step 2.
After completion of these steps, we declare variables from UI and assign this
data type to it which will give us results every time (based on
updates/additions/deletions).
We can also get the results dynamically from Code tables (based on table
entries) for this data types. For this purpose we have to provide code table name
in properties tab of data type.
2. Static Way : Suppose, if we wanted to create a data type
with some standard values then we can provide enumeration values by
adding those from designer.
Data
Structures:
Data Structures allow
us to define our own data structure to perform our business logic by
adding list of things to it. To write our own interfaces also we have to
provide our request and response data structures to process further.
Documents:
We can
create document and link that to UI to perform field level validations and to
store or retrieve data from the data base.
Suppose, we wanted to save 2 UI field details say Customer Id and Customer Name
to a table tbl_customer then we can create a document with these 2 fields and
map the document values to the table in the database and save the values using
<yourDoc>.save(). We can link this document to UI by adding this into
variables list under Variables tab of that UI.
We can
also perform validations on these fields and display error icon beside the
fields if they are any validation violations as part of page leave validations.
We will be using these documents as input or output document in finders etc
too.
User Interface (Presentation UI) :
This is
used to create our View layer. We have almost all the elements that we have it
in HTML like Forms, text fields, buttons, select box, search type etc in
Conceptwave too. But the facility that Conceptwave provide is, we need not to
write all the tags like HTML for instance <form/>, <input/>,
<button/> etc., as it has all these inbuilt. So we just click and select
the required input type and make use of those features.
After
adding the required elements we can specify name, display label, data we wanted
to display to that field (saved data), text data max size, type of
data allowed, operation on that particular fields like onClick
methods, run trigger on selection of any field, onBlur events, editable
or not, visible permissions, any dynamic label, tooltip, label/field alignment
etc.
As
described, we will link documents to UI to save, retrieve data and
perform validations too. To enable validations on the documents by default we
have to check validate check box after adding document to UI under
variables tab.
We can
link one UI to another UI as well but adding child UI under variables tab which
will behave like parent and child. We can get the objects/variables from parent
UI to child UI using this.parent.<variableName/functionName>.
We can
also open new dialog windows as well using common.dialog.
We can
display alert messages and all too as we do in HTML.
Finders:
Finders
are mainly used to get result data and display them in table format using
result form.
We have
different types of finders in Conceptwave like
- Script Finders
- SQL Finders
- Document Finders
- Rule Finders
Based on
the requirement we have to choose the finder. Suppose, if we wanted to retrieve
results from completely through SQL queries then we can go for SQL finders. If
we wanted to write our logic based on some variable values and perform some
java script operations then we can go with Script finders etc.
Global
Scripts:
Apart
from writing function as part of UI, we can write global scripts too which are
mainly used for reusable purpose.
Note: We can modify global scripts
during run-time too without stopping designer.
Processes:
This is
another useful feature of Conceptwave. We can use these processes to automate
user operations for online applications where user intention is not
required.
We will
be using CW workflow to achieve these. We will be building up a flow diagram
similar to our flow chart.
This workflow contains start of the process, conditions and from
conditions related operations will be performed and after completion of all
these process we will end it. We can also use sub-processes too in these
processes.
We have 2 types of processes in Conceptwave.
1. User Process
2. Global Process
User process will gets invoked based on some User Action but Global
processes will gets invoked automatically. Use Global business
process for high CPU or high memory or complex business process. Which will
help us to separate the UI and Business process in different Nodes. This will
help us to reduce the load and avoid GCs in UI servers. So we can ensure the
application availability to 100%.
