Developer's-Panther WebSphere

---

Design Considerations for Panther/WebSphere

In addition to the standard application design tasks, consider the following tasks and issues for your Panther/WebSphere application:

• Build your database schema.

  Having a working database schema speeds the development process. The resulting repository based on that schema contains information identifying database tables and columns and defining table relationships. Your client screens and service components built from that repository contain the necessary information for database access.

• Plan how to use components.

  You can, for example, use components to implement all of your database access and business logic or to implement repeated tasks in a portion of your application.

  There are also different methods of organizing components. One way is to have one group of components that correspond to database tables and another group of components that implement business logic. A component in the business logic group calls the database components it needs to complete a task. The database component group can focus on implementing any database rules while the business logic group focuses on the business rules.

• Plan how components will access the database.

  • To write your own SQL statements, we recommend that the names of fields on your service component (in the Identity property section) match the database column names. However, if this is not possible, an alias command is available for mapping the two objects. For more information about mapping database columns to fields, refer to "Targets for a SELECT Statement" in Application Development Guide.

  • To use the transaction manager, fields on the service component must contain information in the Database section of the Properties window and the service component itself must contain table view widgets for database table information and link widgets for database table relationships. For basic information about transaction manager processing, refer to Chapter 31, "Building a Transaction Manager Screen," in Application Development Guide.

• Define what type of application clients you will need.

  Panther/WebSphere applications can be accessed by GUI clients or by web browsers. Knowing the type of access can help you design your client screens more easily.

• Decide if you need Panther-generated reports.

  Panther-built EJBs are not able to access Panther's report generation feature; only runtime client executables can generate reports. To do so, the client will need a direct database connection.

Assembling the Project Team

A Panther/WebSphere development team can encompass the following roles:

• Business analyst—Defines the business needs of the application.

• WebSphere Application Server administrator—Provides deployment and management tools and a runtime infrastructure for EJBs.

• Database administrator—Coordinates access to databases and other data resources.

• Enterprise bean developer—Implements business logic in EJBs and generates their Java classes and interfaces.

• Application assembler— Creates applications from existing EJBs and deploys those EJBs in web and GUI environments.

• Web designer—Creates HTML pages that can later encapsulate EJB components.