Application Development

About This Document

Application Development Guide describes an application development path, starting with project setup and configuration through to packaging and deployment. Covering various topics related to application development, it discusses approaches to development, strategies for using Panther effectively, and the order in which tasks should be performed.

This guide is organized in the following sections:

Overview: Building a Panther Application: A comprehensive overview of Panther and its application development process.
Section One: Preparing for Development: Topics include the organization of your Panther distribution, a discussion of project requirements, how to set up your application servers and development clients, how to initialize and connect to your database engine and middleware, how to access your application libraries.
Section Two: Creating Application Building Blocks: An introduction to Panther's application components, including screens, widgets, repositories, menu bars, reports and service components.
Section Three: Preparing the Programming Interface: Information about programming events in Panther and how to use JPL, C and Java for event processing, accessing widgets programmatically and manipulating the screen sequence in your Panther application.
Section Four: Accessing the Database: The protocol for Panther's interaction with your database engine-how data and status information is fetched from, or written to, the database, how to build screens that use the transaction manager, how the transaction manager gets its information and processes transactions, and how to customize your transaction manager applications.
Section Five: Testing Your Application: Description of Panther's built-in debugger and instructions for using it to debug your application.
Section Six: Deploying the Application: Information on building Panther development and production executables and for packaging your Panther application for distribution.
Section Seven: Advanced Development Topics: Topics related to Panther's hook functions, portability and internationalization.
Section Nine: Appendices: Information about development utilities. Also includes descriptions of Panther's sample applications.

Documentation Website

The Panther documentation website includes manuals in HTML and PDF formats and the Java API documentation in Javadoc format. The website enables you to search the HTML files for both the manuals and the Java API.

Panther product documentation is available on the Prolifics corporate website at http://docs.prolifics.com/panther/.

How to Print the Document

You can print a copy of this document from a web browser, one file at a time, by using the FilePrint option on your web browser.

A PDF version of this document is available from the Panther library page of the documentation website. You can open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat Reader and print the entire document (or a portion of it) in book format.

If you do not have the Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can get it for free from the Adobe website at https://get.adobe.com/reader/otherversions/.

Documentation Conventions

The following documentation conventions are used throughout this document.


Convention	Item
Ctrl+Tab	Indicates that you must press two or more keys simultaneously. Initial capitalization indicates a physical key.
italics	Indicates emphasis or book titles.
UPPERCASE TEXT	Indicates Panther logical keys. Example: XMIT
boldface text	Indicates terms defined in the glossary.
`monospace text`	Indicates code samples, commands and their options, directories, and file names and their extensions. Monospace text also indicates text that you must enter from the keyboard. Examples: `#include <smdefs.h>` `chmod u+w *` `/usr/prolifics` `prolifics.ini`
`monospace italic text`	Identifies variables in code representing the information you supply. Example: `String` `expr`
`MONOSPACE UPPERCASE TEXT`	Indicates environment variables, logical operators, SQL keywords, mnemonics, or Panther constants. Examples: `CLASSPATH` `OR`
`{ }`	Indicates a set of choices in a syntax line. One of the items should be selected. The braces themselves should never be typed.
`\|`	Separates mutually exclusive choices in a syntax line. The symbol itself should never be typed.
`[ ]`	Indicates optional items in a syntax line. The brackets themselves should never be typed. Example: `formlib [-v]` `library-name` `[``file-list``]...`
`...`	Indicates one of the following in a command line: That an argument can be repeated several times in a command line That the statement omits additional optional arguments That you can enter additional parameters, values, or other information The ellipsis itself should never be typed. Example: `formlib [-v]` `library-name` `[``file-list``]...`
`. . .`	Indicates the omission of items from a code example or from a syntax line. The vertical ellipsis itself should never be typed.

Contact Us!

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