COM/MTS Guide

---

Preparing the Development Workstation

In order to develop COM components, the following items need to be available on the Windows workstation:

• Panther editor for building client screens and service components.

• Panther templates for the DLL and .inf files (PrlServer.dll and PrlServer.inf), typically installed in:

  PantherInstallDir\config

• An application directory, where initially you create two empty application libraries, client.lib for client screens and server.lib for the service components. During development, this directory will also hold the COM components' DLLs.

If you also want to test the components on the same machine, you will need:

• Panther' runtime DLLs in the workstation's PATH, typically installed in:

  ProlificsInstallDir\bin

Preparing for Application Development

Before starting development of your COM application, you may wish to complete the following:

• Map the business logic of your application.

  COM components place the business logic of your application in objects to be accessed at runtime. You can map out the business needs and logic for your application manually or through a modeling tool.

• Build your database schema and a repository based on your database objects.

  Having a working database schema speeds the development process. The resulting repository based on that schema contains the necessary information about database table and column identification. Your client screens and service components built from that repository contain the necessary objects for database access.

  For more information on using a repository during application development, refer to Chapter 11, "Creating and Using a Repository," in Application Development Guide.

• Plan how components will be used in your application.

  You can use components:

  • To implement all of your database access and business logic.

  • To implement repeated tasks in a portion of your application.

    One way to organize components in your application is to have one group of components that correspond to database tables and another group of components that implement the business logic. A component in the business logic group could access several database components as it completes a task.

Accessing Databases

In a COM/MTS application, the database can be accessed from the development client, the application client and/or the COM component.

Development clients

Development clients running the editor need to install a Panther database driver in order to make direct connections to the database. Direct connections are required for creating a repository and are also helpful for testing purposes.

Application clients

Client machines needing a direct database connection must install a Panther database driver for the desired database. In other words, a Panther database driver is not required if the clients use COM components to perform all the data fetches and updates.

COM Components

A machine operating as your COM component server must install the ODBC driver from your database vendor in order to access databases. Since the Panther ODBC database driver is built into the Panther DLLs, you will not need to install a Panther database driver on these machines.

In this version, Panther-built COM components can only access databases through ODBC.