AD301 - Introducing the Composite Application Container Framework

Bob Balfe and Brian O'Gorman worked through the Container Component Framework (CCF). The CCF is a higher abstraction of the composite application framework. Instead of coding WSDL files and custom code the containers allow you to assemble new applications in the Composite Application Editor (CAE) alone. To be able to do that a new view part has been created: the container. A container can define their own properties and events. To be able to do that the container needs to know where it is. That "where" is called a landmark. A landmark could be a URL, a heading or any other piece that can be identified by a String (including regular expressions, wildcards or XPath expressions). The container properties allow to specify landmarks, properties and events. Available containers are:

• Browser Container: Landmarks can define values which are in different positions in the DOM on different pages to publish a single property. You can use simple expressions like id:name or full XPath expressions. The tooling shields you from learning XPath expressions (neat), you just name the landmark and point to the element you want to use.
• Notes View Container: Extract information from Notes views without changing the database or use WSDL. What's neat: multiple document selections are supported with a custom definable delimiter.
• PIM View Container: Accesses the PIM Java Views and supports Formula and Column extraction. It supports a lot of predefined properties.
• Symphony Spreadsheet Container: extract and publish data from spreadsheets using single cells, cell ranges or named ranges.
• Host on Demand: Wire your 3270 session in your application (not shown here).
• Roll your own: there is a new Expeditor class that serves as a base: com.ibm.rcp.composite.container.core.AppContainer. With overwriting a few methods your container is ready to go.
• OpenSpan: Host any Windows application in Expeditor/Notes

Future containers will be: Excel, more Symphony, enhanced configuration options including your own landmark editors. Go and check them out.