Using the Editors

Using the Editors introduces you to the user interface development component of the Panther framework. If you are new to Panther software, you should first go through Getting Started; it guides you through the process of building a Panther application. Refer to Using the Editors in the process of application development for more details about an aspect of the interface.

Panther User Interface Components

User interface development components are the tools used to build applications. The following Panther user interface components are introduced and described in detail in this book: editors and wizards, screens and widget types, reports, service components, Properties window, libraries, and repositories.

Editors

The Panther editors are some of the tools used to build your applications. The editors and their functions are as follows:

• Editor—Create and edit screens, reports, and service components from scratch, with the help of the wizards, or from visual objects that are automatically created as the result of importing database tables to a repository. The editor provides access to a test mode environment. Test mode simulates how your application behaves and appears to users. You can easily switch between edit and test modes.

• Menu bar editor—Create and edit menus that you can attach to individual screens via the editor or define for your application as a whole. In test mode, you can test screens that use the menu bar/toolbar, and quickly switch between edit and test modes.

• JIF editor (JetNet/Oracle Tuxedo only)—Create and edit the JIF with the help of the graphical JIF editor. The JIF contains information about services and service groups. For Oracle Tuxedo applications, the JIF also contains information about reliable queues in an application. The JIF is a central repository of all such information and is accessed at runtime to determine the requirements and specifications of services and reliable queues.

  Note: The JIF editor does not have a test mode environment.

• Styles editor—Enhance the transaction manager's control of the appearance and behavior of widgets on your database application screens.

Wizards

The wizards are easy to use and guide you through the design process to create screens and reports that work with the transaction manager. The editor provides access to the Panther wizards:

• Screen Wizard—Design screens for two-tier, three-tier, and Web architectures.

• Report Wizard—Design a Panther report that you can use unchanged, or easily edit for added functionality and refinements.

Application Building Blocks

The main building blocks of a Panther application are its screens, reports, and service components. The editor provides a graphical environment for building your application components and populating them with widgets.

Screens, being the part of the application that is presented to the end-user, has the greatest number of widget types. For example, a screen can have text widgets for displaying and entering data, push buttons for user actions, check boxes and radio buttons for user selections, and dynamic labels for graphics. These and other widget types are created in the editor.

Service components, which are used in three-tier applications, are created in the editor and then deployed on the application server.

Reports have two views in the editor: report layout, where the different areas of the report are defined, and report structure, which determines the order of the report areas and the processing to occur for each area.

Properties Window

You can set properties for screens, reports, service components and widgets via the Properties window. The Properties window consists of a variety of features and methods for displaying and setting property values for the selected object in one convenient location. Setting properties allows you to control the look and behavior of your application components.

You can reference Panther objects and their properties through JPL, C or Java. If a property is accessible through the screen editor, its JPL mnemonic is usually a variant of the name used in the Properties window.

Libraries

In Panther, all screens, reports, menus, service components, JPL modules, and JIFs are stored in libraries. The editor allows you to open and create libraries or use the following distributed libraries:

• Client library for screens, reports, menus, and JPL modules that comprise the client side, or user interface, of the application.

• Server library for service components and JPL modules that define the server side of the application (three-tier only).

• Common library for application-wide objects such as the JIF and configuration files (JetNet/Oracle Tuxedo only).

Repositories

Panther's visual object repository provides a data dictionary-like mechanism for storing application components and importing the objects' definition to your application screens. Repositories can have multiple entries; each repository entry is composed of widgets. Your repository entries, both the entries and the widgets on them, have properties that define their visual attributes and behavior as well as database definitions if the objects were derived from a database. You can use and reuse these objects wherever they are needed in your application.

The visual object repository provides:

• A mechanism to assure consistency and control among all components of your application.

• A single reference for data elements and templates used in an application.

• A facility for propagating database table and column information to your application.

• A single access method for propagating changes to widget and screen properties without having to individually edit each application screen.

You will learn to create and open repositories, open repository entries, create and save repository entries and control the properties that will continue to maintain an inheritance relationship.

Note: You can create and open remote repositories only during JetNet/Oracle Tuxedo development.

Importer

You can import your database tables and views to a repository. The importing process creates a repository entry for each database table or view and a widget for each database column. These repository entries provide the basis for your screen and report development.

Transaction Manager

When you copy imported database objects from the repository to your application screens with the Panther editor, you automatically provide the transaction manager with all the information it needs to build transactions that access and update the database. Within the authoring environment, you can execute transaction manager commands that access databases without needing to write any SQL (Structured Query Language) commands.