Basic knowledge for developing Fat-Client with Java / index

Basic knowledge for developing Fat-Clients with Java / index

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Last revision of this document:
2006-04-27

This document and documents referenced here describe and explain the basic structures and the development of base-classes for my method to develop Fat-Clients with Java.

I hope, you can derive valuable knowledge out of my documentation. For any suggestions or questions please send me an e-mail by clicking onto the 'hungry mailbox' in the upper left corner.

Kurt Gstöttner, Java Developer

Prerequisites:

There is no specific reading or training requiered.
But this documents do not teach basics of application development.

Warning:
Reading of the listed documents might be difficult if you miss basic knowledge of programm-structures, Java elements or XML-elements.
At least you should already have gained the following knowledge:
* Basic structures of programming (if, for, while, calling subroutines or functions and passing parameters to them).
* Basic knowledge of object-oriented programming (create an object, passing parameters).
* Knowledge of GUI-design in Java; I recommend the tutorial JS_Base02 - A DataBase-Loader with a GUI (Graphic User Interface).
* Basic knowledge about the structure of XML.

`Contents:`

The referenced documents are sorted into 3 groups.

The first group reflects architectural decisions; e.g. the creation and naming of subdirectories or the 'building' of user-interfaces with 'panels'.
The second group describes the structure of XML-files; particularly the ones for displaying text in different languages.
The third group explains the code for the base-classes.
These base-classes provide methods repeatedly needed by most of Java-applications with a GUI.
They can be inhereted by individual applications and ease the amount of coding.

Architectural Decisions

Document	Content
Directory Architecture	Directory for the application-files and subdirectories for parameters, graphic elements and language-specific text-components.
Building a GUI in Java using Panels	Description how a Graphic User Interface (GUI) is made out of several Panels. These Panels contain other elements (labels, entry fields, buttons).
Using Business Objects to handle data-storage and -retrieval	Theory about the intention of Business Objects and advantages over other designs to store and retrieve persistant (permanent) data.

Structure of XML-files

Document	Content
Structure of the xml-file with language-dependant text-elements for the user-interface	Description of the file 'DisplayStrings.xml'. This file contains a structure in XML-format which contains language specific elements for the GUI (Graphic-User-Interface).
Structure of the xml-file with the list of Task for the application	Description of the file 'Tasks.xml'. This file contains a structure in XML-format which contains the implemented Sub-Tasks, their internal code, their user-selectable code (language dependant) and the language-dependant description of the Sub-Task.
Structure of the xml-file with the parameters for database- and JAS-connection	Description of the file 'Connections.xml'. This file contains a structure in XML-format which contains the parameters to connect to a database-system and/or to a Java-Application-Server (JAS).

Code for the base-classes that are used for applications with a GUI

Document	Content
JSBS_StartFrame (Base class for the Start-Frame) JSBS_TaskFrame (Base class for a Task-Frame)	This base classes provide a lot of functions for applications; a detailed list of the values and the methods is described at the code.
JSBS_UniversalParameters_Constants JSBS_UniversalParameters	Universal parameters are a set of values for interchanging informations between a 'CommandCenter' (StartFrame) and frames for maintenance of detail-data. The explanation of variables and methods is described at the code.
JSBS_MinimalParameters	Minimal parameters are a subset of JSBS_UniversalParameters and contain the parameter that are passed to the methods that are responsibled for database-operations. As the methods to perform database-operations are usually on a remote machine with a Java-Application-Server (JAS) it is a question of performance to transfer only necessary parameters and not the whole set of values of JSBS_UniversalParameters . The explanation of variables and methods is described at the code.
JSBS_XML_Constants JSBS_XML_Base JSBS_XML_DisplayStrings JSBS_XML_Connections JSBS_XML_Tasks	These set of Interfaces and Classes contain code, that reads files with XML-structures and searches the XML-structures for given keys (e.g. class-name of a frame / name of an element) and retrieves the values for requested properties (e.g. FrameTitle, text of a label, ToolTipText). The explanation of variables and methods is described at the code.
JSBS_BO	This class contains code that is common to all Business Objects. For the theory about Business Objects please refer to`Using Business Objects to handle data-storage and retrieval.` A more detailed description with links to guidelines to code classes for business-entities is in Business Object, Overview - Advanced Java Fat-Client-Development. The explanation of constants, variables and methods is described at the code.
JSBS_DB_ConnectionManager	This class contains establishes and maintains one or more connections to the database-system. As opening a connection takes a reasonable time, the ConnectionManager keeps once established connections for a later re-use. Therefore an increase in performance is gained.
JSBS_DBA JSBS_DBA_Set	This class contains code that is common to all Data-Base-Access (DBA) Objects. For the theory about DBA Objects please refer to`Using Data-Base-Access (DBA) Objects for low level access to database-tables - Java Base Knowledge.` The explanation of constants and variables is described at the code.
JSBS_GUIServices	This base class contains static methods that provice services for the GUI-elements of JAVA (java.awt and javax.swing libraries). Among those methods are * reading the XML-structure with language specific text and transferring the text to the matching GUI-element, * formatting a numeric value and setting it to a GUI-element, * checking if the entered text to a GUI-element is 'numeric', * getting a numeric value from a GUI-element and converting it to a numeric type, etc. Please refer to the comments within the class for a detailed description of each method.

Prerequisites:

Contents:

Related Documents:

`Contents:`

`Related Documents:`