Specifying General Properties

The editor of business objects has several tabs – Attributes, Forms, Update Rules, Delete Rules and Presentations. The Property window contains the following properties:

Specify the name of the business object uniquely identifying it within the business space version. The following restrictions apply:

1. The name must start with a character (not digit) or underscore symbol. All other symbols in the name must be either characters (including underscore symbol) or digits. No spaces or special symbols are allowed.
2. The name must be unique among the names of other business objects, business object groups and notifications.
3. The name must not start with one of the instance prefixes – This, That, Added, Removed, LoggedIn, Changed or Failed.
4. The name must not be one of the reserved names – File, Day, Question, EmailSender, ReceivedEmail, IncomingEmail.
5. The name must not coincide with the name of the basic attribute types – Number, Date, Duration, Timestamp, Shortcut, Document or Picture.

Specify any text that describes what the business object is for, the business concept that it represents, how it is used etc. Any description if defined is included into the generated documentation for the business space version. To provide the description for the business object, click on the Menu button in the top right corner of the screen and select “Business object description”.

You can group objects by category. Objects belonging to a particular category are grouped in the Elements Tree. Enter a new category or select from the list of existing ones. You can apply the same category to several objects at once if you paste them under this category in the Elements Tree.

You must specify where instances of the business objects will be stored:

1. Usually business objects are permanently stored in the database that is automatically managed by AwareIM. This is the default persistence option (Database: AwareIM automatic).
2. Sometimes it may be necessary to use existing database tables not initially created by AwareIM (see working with data stored in existing database tables or ldap for details). To select this option choose Database:existing external (for data stored in external databases) or LDAP (for data stored in a LDAP server) from the persistence drop-down.
3. If you choose Not persisted option instances of the business object will be temporarily created in memory (see Data Storage). In this case the instances are destroyed when they are no longer needed by those rules that create and use them.
   1. Here you can also check the “Store Session Values” checkbox to indicate that this object will be special – the instance of this object will be automatically created when a user logs in. There is only one instance of this object per user and the instance is always present in Context. Which means that you can use the object to store attribute values that are persisted in memory only for the duration of the user session.
4. Select Custom option if you develop a Java plug-in that implements custom persistence storage (see Programmers Reference Guide for more details). Specify the fully quialified name of the plug-in by clicking on the Settings button.

Intelligent business objects are those that AwareIM can communicate with through the defined channels (see intelligent business objects). By default business object is not intelligent. To make business object intelligent define the Communication channels of the object by clicking on the “Communication” property and defining its communication channels – see defining intelligent business objects for details.