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Modeling Tips for Building Web Applications

When building a Host Integrator model, use these tips for enhancing your Web Builder projects.

The names you assign while you are creating a model determine what appears in the resulting Web application:

  • Operation names are displayed on buttons.
  • Procedure names appear as navigation links.
  • Descriptions appear as tool tips.
  • Underscores and mid-word capitalizations are replaced by spaces. For example, your_procedure is replaced with your procedure, and MyProcedure is replaced with My Procedure.

Attributes

In the Web application, attributes are labeled using names defined in the model. To create a more detailed description of an attribute, open the Advanced Attribute Properties dialog box from the Design Tool's Attribute tab. Supply a description to be used as a tool tip for the attribute.

Read-only attributes appear in the Web application as text that cannot be edited; writable attributes appear as HTML input fields that permit the user to type in a value. Writable attributes that need encryption, such as passwords, use an HTML password input field to ensure that the user-entered value is not echoed to the screen.

Displaying Operations

In a Web application, operations are displayed as buttons. The operation names defined in the model appear as text on the buttons. Descriptions appear as tool tips.

When a user selects a recordset scrolling operation, the recordset will scroll through its records appropriately. When the end user selects an operation not associated with a recordset, the Web application sends the value of any attribute that the end user has changed to the Host Integrator Server. The Web application communicates to the Host Integrator Server to execute the entity operation corresponding to the selected button.

Displaying Host Data in Recordsets

Recordsets are labeled using the names you define in the model. Recordsets appear as read-only text in the Web application. You can update recordsets by creating a procedure to handle the update processing.

If scrolling operations have been defined for a recordset, the Web application displays buttons that correspond to these operations. Users can navigate through the recordset display using these buttons.

If recordset selection is defined in the model, the generated Web application supports selecting a specific record to display record details.

Event Handlers and Terminal Screen Layout

When Web Builder generates a Web application from a model containing event handlers, there are several limitations, depending on the type of Web application you are building. Web applications using a terminal screen layout have these limitations:

  • Attribute reads are truncated to fit the attribute size that is defined in the model.
  • Attribute input fields only allow input of characters up to the attribute size that is defined in the model.