eClient 101 Customization and Integration

208 eClient 101 Customization and Integration

8.1 Design considerations

Before you begin designing and implementing your customized eClient, there are

several important considerations:

򐂰 Considerations for incorporating future upgrades of eClient

򐂰 Considerations for working with different EIP back-end servers

򐂰 EIP back-end access vs direct access to back-end servers

򐂰 Maximum length of a URL

򐂰 Variations in Web browsers

In the following sections, we address each of these in detail.

8.1.1 Considerations for incorporating future upgrades of eClient

One very important factor to consider when customizing the eClient is that IBM

will continue to update and enhance eClient. This may include changes to the

servlets, tag libraries, and most importantly, to the JSPs.

Since there are many JSPs that you can modify or replace with your own, it is

important to give careful consideration to how much you customize the JSPs and

how you will merge your customization with future versions of the eClient JSPs.

Keeping your changes manageable and easy to merge into new versions of the

eClient will make it easier to take advantage of new eClient functionality provided

in future versions of the eClient.

There are several things you can do to make this task easier:

1. Minimize the number of changes you make to the eClient JSPs.

This is a very simple yet important concept. While it can be tempting to begin

making small changes to lots of the JSPs to “tweak” the user interface, it is

important to remember that if you want to take advantage of new eClient

features in future releases, most likely you will need to re-apply and re-test

every customization that you make.

2. Keep as much new code as possible out of the JSPs.

Put as much custom code into new code modules outside of the JSPs as

possible. This can be in brand-new JSPs being the view for newly added

functionality (servlets) or new tag libraries. Using tag libraries reduces

complexity in the JSPs, allows implementation reuse, and simplifies migration

to a new eClient version.

3. Clearly mark your custom code in the JSPs.

You can make it easier to find your customizations by putting comments

before and after each change. This has been done in the examples in the

Chapter 8. Design and implementation considerations 209

redbook by inserting XYZ_CHG_BEGIN and XYZ_CHG_END before and after each

customization, where XYZ is the acronym for the fictional company.

Another alternative is to make each of your customizations configurable via a

properties file. This makes it easy to switch back to the default functionality of

the eClient, and also ensures that all changes are clearly marked. However,

this does require additional effort and results in more source code. Many of

the sample customizations in the later chapters of this redbook use this

method.

We also recommend using file comparison tools to make it easier to compare

source files.

8.1.2 Considerations for working with different EIP back-end servers

Different back-end servers provide different functionality in the eClient. The

Content Manager Version 8 back-end server provides the richest set of

functionality. Many other back-ends may provide only search-and-view

functionality. You need to be aware of this if you are considering using different

back-end repositories.

8.1.3 EIP back-end access vs direct access to back-end servers

The eClient can connect directly to a back-end server such as Content Manager

Version 7 or Content Manager Version 8. As an alternative, the eClient can also

connect to the EIP database and use federated access to the back-end servers.

It is important to note that even if you access your back-end server by connecting

to the EIP federated connector, you may see native back-end interfaces for some

functions as you drill down on documents in the eClient. For example, when you

get into the edit attributes window, the interface no longer uses the attribute

display names used in the search templates and the search results. Instead, the

system goes directly to the back-end and displays the fields in the order they are

defined in Content Manager and with the attributes names defined in Content

Manager.

In addition, if you use an EIP search template to perform a search and get a list

of folders, when you open the folder, the eClient must revert to a back-end

specific view of the folder. Therefore, you see the Content Manager Index Class

or Item Type names and the Content Manager attributes names after opening a

folder.