Understanding Ebase Integration

For detailed information on integrating with:

Business Views	see Working with Business Views
Databases	see Working with Databases
XML	see Working with XML Resources
Web Services	see Working with XML Resources
Stored Procedures	see Working with Stored Procedures
Email	see Working with Email
Messages including IBM MQ Series	see Working with MQ Series
Printing Resources	see Working with Printing Resources
Custom Resources	see Working with Custom Resources

Documentation for deprecated facilities from previous releases:

XML Custom Resource	see XML Custom Resource (prior to V3.3)
Web Services Custom Resource	see Web Services Custom Resource (prior to V3.3)
XML Custom Resource example	see XMLCustomResourceExample (prior to V3.3)
Simple XML Resources	see Working with XML Resources (prior to V3.2)

Integration with external resources

Ebase supports integration with a number of external resources: databases, stored procedures, email, XML, Web Services, message systems such as MQSeries, printing and custom resources. What these external resources have in common is that they all have the capability of exchanging data with Ebase form fields or tables. The Ebase view of these resources is that they consist of a number of resource fields, and that these resource fields can be mapped to form fields. Data exchange between an external resource and a form is controlled by scripts:

FPL:

By issuing commands: e.g. fetch, insert, sendmail etc

API based language:

By invoking methods on the resource objects e.g. resources.DBRESOURCE1.fetch(), resources.DBRESOURCE1.insert(),resources.EMAIL1.sendmail() etc

A critical element within this process is the business view. This element represents all the external resources with which a form can integrate. A business view, once created, can be shared between any number of forms. Use of a business view is mandatory even if the need is only to connect to a single external resource.

The Ebase integration framework for external resources is shown in the following diagram:

The recommended sequence of steps to integrate a form with an external resource is:

1. Define the external resource if this has not yet been done.

2. Create a business view and add the resource - alternatively add the resource to an existing business view

3. Associate the business view with the form using the form properties dialog

4. Import fields from the resource into the form using the fields wizard

5. Code script commands to read/write data to or from the resource as required

The advantage of importing fields from an external resource as described in step 4 is that this automatically creates the mappings between form fields and resource fields. An alternative approach instead of step 4 is to manually create the form resource mappings using the field mappings button in the form editor.