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About Object Connections

Object connections are special relations between two logical units where one of the logical units is of general type and may therefore be handled as "public" or "global". Another view of the situation is that common business objects may be connected to general global services in the business area.

These relations/connections can not be seen in the object model of the business classes. Examples of general services are: document connections, project awareness or technical data information.

The difference between object connections and associations is that object connection are dynamic (can be defined in runtime) and don't create dependencies between components.

Uses

An object connection server is a logical unit which behaves like a global service to be connected from several other logical units (object connection clients) in a business application. Note that these servers are registered in the presentation layer such as IFS Client Developer (Component.register).

An object connection client is a logical unit whose instances (records) may be connected to some kind of global service (object connection servers). Note that these clients are registered in the server side business logic at install-time (Object_Connection_API.Enable_Connection) and may be changed by tools within IFS/Deployment Administrator.

Presentation Layer Behavior

  • When registering object connection servers in the presentation layer, a form will be associated with the server. This form/window will be used when registering active object connections.
  • The object connection icon in the toolbar will be enabled when activating windows towards data from a logical unit which is an object connection client.
  • When activating an object connection by the icon or the function key, a window will appear to register the connection. The window will include one tab for each object connection server available for this specific logical unit. Each tab of the window will be dynamically instantiated with the window associated with the object connection server.