Working with business object definitions

Business Object Designer provides a tabbed dialog box with two screens for creating and editing a definition:

When you first create or open a definition, the Attributes tab opens.

Figure 28 illustrates the environment for defining and editing attributes.

Figure 28. Defining and editing attributes

The figure shows the business object designer open to the attributes page of a business object. This page is a table of all the attributes of the business object, one attribute per row.

For information on using the General and Attributes tabs, see "Creating a business object definition".

Opening a business object definition and its contained child

Business Object Designer allows you to open separate windows to edit definitions for a parent business object definition and its contained child.

Figure 29 illustrates the separate windows for editing parent and child business objects.

Figure 29. Separate windows for parent and child business objects


Notice that the Address attribute in the Contact business object is collapsed in Figure 29. You can expand the attribute so that the Contact window displays all attributes of the Address business object, which enables you to edit the child directly from the parent. To prevent you from changing the same definition in two places, however, the tool automatically closes a child business object's window whenever you expand a child business object within its parent business object.

Figure 30 illustrates the tool after Contact's Address attribute has been expanded and the Address window has been closed.

Figure 30. Expanding a parent business object's attribute that represents the child business object


Copyright IBM Corp. 1997, 2004