Bean Extender General Information
The Bean Extender technology provides a programming environment that
focuses on tool enablement and the production of second-tier Java beans. The
Bean Extender technology facilitates the creation of plug-n-play Java
componentry. These Java components are tailored for the enterprise through the
modification, extension, aggregation, scripting, management, packaging, and
deployment of Java bean instances.
The Bean Extender technology enhances or extends the current JavaBeans
design patterns to provide better tool support. The Bean Extender enhancements
to Java beans include:
- The Dipping Framework provides component assemblers with ways
to dynamically add, delete, or modify the behaviors of existing JavaBeans
components. Bean Extender includes a standard set of production-level
behaviors such as security, version control, system management, printing, and
so forth. All of these features can be applied without the component source
code. Developers and assemblers can create custom behaviors (dips) in addition
to the standard behaviors. Behaviors can be dynamically added throughout the
component life cycle: development, deployment, and run-time execution
with direct modification of the existing JavaBeans components.
- The Assembly Surface supports simple aggregation of instances
of Java beans, including the republishing of properties, events, and methods.
The aggregation model does not generate hard coded connections or
states for the aggregated beans. Rather, it builds an aggregated bean instance
from multiple bean instances. This aggregated instance retains its customized
state by way of persistence through serialization. The persistent aggregate
state can be updated at a later date or a new persistent state can be created
from a modified aggregated bean instance without regenerating the Java code.
- The Scripting Framework provides a facility for adding
business logic to new and existing Java beans using the standard
scripting model. This scripting model includes the ability to wire
together individual beans within an aggregate Java bean. The supported
scripting languages are Java and NetRexx.
- Bean Management facilitates the packaging and management of
Java beans. Generally, a JavaBeans component is comprised of multiple related
classes and data files. The number of class and data files can complicate a
tool interface and its internal workings. The Bean Extender technology
abstracts much of the complexity of dealing with a single bean and all its
related files by using a single ManagedBean class and by
maintaining an abstracted persistent storage location. The use of a single
class makes it easier to develop tools that use beans as input and produce
beans as output. Bean Management supports various storage locations including
directories and JAR files.
- Bean Deployment manages the distribution of Java beans both
locally and over the network. After beans are produced, they need to be
deployed. The Bean Extender technology supports bean deployment in the
following ways:
The Bean Extender technology provides miscellaneous tools that help Java
developers and assemblers. The Data Input Wizard is a graphical
user interface that allows Java developers and assemblers to create beans from
encoded legacy data read from the input stream. The ExtraStuff
package allows Java developers and assemblers to add collections of methods,
properties, and events at runtime that can be used by other beans either
through the use of dynamic APIs or by compiling them into new beans.
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