If you are designing an application-specific business object for
an existing connector or data handler, your first step is to
consult its adapter user guide for its requirements on specifying
application-specific information and using business object
handlers. Keep the following points in mind when designing business
objects for an existing connector or data handler:
- To determine if there is an available Object Discovery Agent,
check the adapter user guide for the connector and the
documentation for the data handler that will process your business
object. Using the Object Discovery Agent can greatly facilitate the
business object design effort, particularly when the entity
involved is large.
- Determine whether there is an existing business object
available that models the application entity, such as a sample.
Determine whether the effort to customize the existing business
object is less than creating an entirely new one and if so then
consider using the sample business object.
Important |
IBM does not support sample business objects, but they can be
very useful as a starting point for business object design.
|
- If there are no existing business objects for the entities you
need to model and an Object Discovery Agent does not already exist
for the application, you can develop a new Object Discovery Agent
for the application. This might not be an efficient approach if
there are very few business objects that are required for the
application or if the entities are very small. For more
information, see Developing an
Object Discovery Agent.
- Whether you use an Object Discovery Agent or an existing
business object, it is still important to examine and confirm all
the data definition requirements, such as the object key, foreign
keys, child business objects, default values, data types, and size
limitations. The following factors result in this requirement:
- Object Discovery Agents can facilitate the design effort, but
cannot discovery all of the requirements surrounding an application
entity.
- With existing business objects, the threat is that applications
can be installed and configured different ways to accommodate
customer-specific needs. A business object that accurately models
an entity in one application installation may not accurately model
that entity in another installation of that application.
While designing the application-specific business object, keep
in mind that its primary role is to model the entity in the data
source. It is also important to identify how its associated
connector or data handler handles its processing, and what are the
requirements of the business process in which it participates.
