High Level Object Components
A Framework Application consists of a main container object, which contains a number of high-level component object packages. In a web application, the main object is a web application container. All of the high-level web object components are placed in this container. In a Windows application, the main container is actually two objects: a visual panel object and a child client-area object. All of your high-level Windows object components are placed inside the client-area object. In both types of applications, these main container objects are quite simple and require little customization. The High Level Components are the objects that make an application unique, and this is where you will spend your development time.
High Level Components in Windows Applications
Most of the high-level object components in a Windows Application are visual. Views are used to view, edit, and maintain data. Report Views are used to set up and run reports. Lookup Lists are used to display database data for lookup purposes. Business Process components, a non-visual object, are used to handle update processing.
High Level Components in Web Applications
Web Applications contain two types of web-object components: Web Business Process objects and Web Service Objects. Web Business Process Objects are used to handle processing for web browser requests. Web Service Objects are used to handle processing for web service requests.
Common Characteristics of all High Level Components
The high-level components all operate using the same underlying principles. Those are:
- They are created as separate source components.
- They can be built, tested, and maintained individually.
- Once working, they can be added to one or more applications in a building block fashion.
- They all use the same rules for encapsulation.
- They use the same methods for placing and accessing objects.
- They all use Data-Dictionaries to access and maintain their data.
- The same Data-Dictionary classes are used by all components.
- The rules for assembling Data-Dictionary Objects into a structure (which is the basis of the Framework) are the same in all components.
- The interface used to access Data-Dictionaries is the same in all components.
- They are all designed to be developed within the DataFlex Studio. This is important. The Studio applies many of the concepts and rules discussed in this Framework section automatically. The Studio will help guide you down the proper path and make the development process faster and more reliable.
Because of these shared characteristics, once you learn the rules for creating one high-level component, you can apply these rules to all of them. The next topic focuses primarily on one type of component—Views. Once you understand how a View works, you will be able to easily apply this understanding to all of the other component types.