Constructor

Introduction

The Constructor is a workspace where you can build your business connectors

1. Tab / Select business connector
2. Information widgets
3. Business connector selector/creator
4. Interfaces overview
5. License selector / Application information

Menu

The menu, or header of the ConnectPlaza interface has 3 tabs on the left hand a logout button on the right.

By selecting Dashboard, Constructor, Deploy or Analyze, you will end up with the application of your choice. The option Dashboard is only visible if you have administrative rights. In Constructor you can build the business connectors and in Deploy, you can deploy the connectors to any of your end user environments. Analyze is a separate licensed application which gives you the opportunity to analyze the data consumed and produced by the ConnectPlaza application.

At the left side of your log out button, you will see your company name and the user who is logged in at the moment. With the log out button, you can leave the application. 

Cockpit Widgets

The widgets in the cockpit will give you additional information concerning the ConnectPlaza environment. You can add the available widgets to your desktop by clicking on the

If there are any available widgets you can select them in the Add widget box by selecting the widget.

License selector / Application information

At the right of the screen you can see the next icons .
Those icons will always appear at the top of the page in Constructor. 

- License selector. With this selector you can select a specific license you are entitled to work on. This is probably your development account and some installed end user licenses.

 - Go to the widget screen of Constructor

 - Select advanced mode for constructor items

- The number of accounts logged in.

 - Toggle the help menu to select the About text or the documentation web site. 

Advanced settings

As of version 3.4.x of ConnectPlaza you will get a special Advanced option in your selection bar. With this option Constructor switches between the advanced state and the more normal state of the components. The advanced state will display for some of the components more fields of an advanced nature, i.e. fields that are not needed in most implementations, but necessary in specific situations.

For instance the HTTP Gateway:

You see an indication at the top of the component screen:

You see this indication, if you not have entered the advanced mode, to notice the developer that this is a component with advanced options. If you press the  button (it turns blue), the advanced indication will move after the labels of the advanced option fields. For instance: .

Depricated components

In our component library we (as ConnectPlaza) can set certain components as Depricated. Depricated means that you cannot use this component anymore in your new flows.

But if you have an interface which already contains this Aggregator Service, you will be able to work with it. Though you will be strongly adviced to rewrite the specific component.

Depricated services will be removed at a certain point in time.

Business connector selector/creator

Here you can select and create your Business connectors. These Business connectors will hold your Interfaces.

You can see two items here, a selection box and a   button. With the selection box, you can select a previously created business connector. With the button, you can create a new business connector. If the  button is not available, you probably have a partner account. With this type of account, you can only create one business connector. The  will be removed from the page, if this is the case. 

Docu

Here you can select a name for your new Business connector. Remember, special characters are not allowed. The Save button will be deactivated when the software detects one of the characters not allowed. By pressing the Save button you will create a new Business connector, pressing the Cancel button will return you to the menu.

When you have created your new Business connector, the business connector will be automatically selected for you. If you have more than one business connector, you can select the one you want to work on via the selection box.

If you press the button, you will see the following options:

• Edit - You can edit the properties of the Business connector at a global level.
• Diagram - A diagram of the Business connector will be generated for you
• Remove - You can remove the Business connnector with this option

Be careful! When you delete a business connector, you will also delete all of the interfaces and flows you have created within that business connector. 

Adding Properties

You can add properties on a global level at the business connector. These properties can be used throughout the whole business connector. To add properties, select the Edit option.

Press the button to add a property:

Once a property has been added to the business connector, it looks like this:

Pressing the button, returns the following menu:

Here you can select to copy the field to the clipboard, edit the settings or remove the value.

The property-values created in the business connector have a larger scope than the properties created at Flow level. The properties of the business connector appear in the properties tab with an underline and will be sorted alphabetically at the top of the properties list.

Interfaces overview

When you have chosen a business connector in the business connector overview, you can start creating interfaces. An interface is a collection of flows  belonging together, including their resources, custom error handlers and beans.

Bij pressing the button, a menu will appear with three options.

Select the option Add emtpy interface to begin with a new empty interface.

In this screen, you can choose to either import an existing interface or start creating a new one. Because we have not made an Interface yet, we will start creating one.

By pressing the Save button you will create a new Interface, pressing the Cancel button will return you to the menu.

Your newly created Interface will look like this:

With the Options button , you can bring up the options menu.

Here you can edit your Interface, giving you the option to change the name, description and default custom error handling. You can also download your Interface here. This makes it possible to import this interface in another Business connector. Your third option is to bring up the diagram. This gives you a textual representation of your interface and all the flows in it, which is very useful for documentation purposes. Then you have the option to move your interface.

Here you can select a business connector to move your interface to.

Finally the options menu gives you the option to outright remove your interface. 

With the  button you can unfold your interface to show its components.

From this screen you can choose to add  and see  the flows, resources, custom error handlers, beans and bundles in this interface. 

Creating an interface via the Wizard

For specific interfaces we have created wizards to help you implement them. For now there are 2 interfaces present in this wizard, but there are probably more to come in the future.

After selecting the option By wizard in the menu, you will be presented with the following screen.

Select the interface you want to create and press the big blue button with the description of the wizard to begin.

Flows

A Flow is a collection of ConnectPlaza-components and consists of:

• A Consumer (mandatory);
• One or more Services (not mandatory);
• A Producer (not mandatory, but recommended) 

With the Add Button , you can add a Flow.

By pressing the Save button you will create a new flow, pressing the Cancel button will return you to the menu.

When you have created your Flow, it will become visible in the Interface Overview, under the Interface of your choice.

With the  button, you can open, edit, move, duplicate or remove the Flow. 

Resources

A Resource can be any kind of file. Some ConnectPlaza-components require external files, for example this could be a XSLT Resource. Resources can be added with the Add button .

If you want to upload a Mapforce Mapping, select the special link. Mapforce resources are .zip files, which are treated differently than other resources.

Simply drag the resource you would like to use into the drop field to add them to your Interface.

Pressing the  button, you will get the following menu.

Edit and remove speak for themselves. Duplicate is an option to duplicate the selected resource to another part of your business entity. After selecting the Duplicate option you will get the duplicate screen.

Select the interface in your business entity to copy the seleted rescource to. Press the button Duplicate to activate your selection.

Custom handling

Custom handlings are only visible if you have activated the default error flow on the interface. Otherwise this option is not visible.

With a custom handling you can trigger an exception handling on a specific trigger. You can add a custom handling by clicking on the . The next screen will then open for you:

You can enter the following fields:

Scripts

A script can be used to add some specific behavior for a message. You can add scripts to your message flow at a variety of points. You can add a script with the Add button  . A script window will open. You can add the name for the script here.

The following data must be entered: 

Press save to add the script to the collection. 

With the buttons you will be redirected to the ConnectPlaza Documentation or the Java documentation.

Pressing the  button, you will get the following menu.

Edit and remove speak for themselves. Duplicate is an option to duplicate the selected script to another part of your business entity. After selecting the Duplicate option you will get the duplicate screen.

Select the interface in your business entity to copy the seleted script to. Press the button Duplicate to activate your selection.

Beans

Some ConnectPlaza-components make use of a Java Bean. You can add a Java Bean with the Add button . Note that you add the configuration of the Bean here in XML, the .jar containing your bean should be uploaded as a Resource.

Pressing the  button, you will get the following menu.

Edit and remove speak for themselves. Duplicate is an option to duplicate the selected bean to another part of your business entity. After selecting the Duplicate option you will get the duplicate screen.

Select the interface in your business entity to copy the seleted bean to. Press the button Duplicate to activate your selection.

Properties

Properties can be used in your application as a kind of global variables. You can use these properties with most fields in the constructor. Press to create a new property.

For example:

You will get a property in the properties list, you can use inside this Interface.

You can drag and drop a variable to a field within your flow:

Bundles

A bundle is a built Interface. You can run your bundles in your Deploy Agent.

There are two types of bundles: Snapshot and Release. Snapshot is used for testing purposes and uses the current version number with the date and time of creation appended. Release is used for production environments and automatically sets the version number one higher after its creation. After creation of the bundle, you will get a Bundle status message like this:

Now you can do a Quick Deploy which means that you will be rerouted to ConnectPlaza Deploy to deliver your interface to a chosen interface. If you select Close, the message will close and you will return to the Constructor interface.

With the  button, you can download or remove the Bundle. 

You have to have at least one active flow in your bundle. If you do not have an active flow in your bundle, you will receive the following message and the bundle will not be created:

Flow workspace

When you have created a flow you can open it by double clicking the flow or by pressing the  button and selecting Open. When you have opened the Flow, the following sections will appear in the workspace and you can start inserting components.

The consumer, service and producer are called component sections. Within these component sections, you can start to incorporate components. You can also set a flow description on the right hand side. You can always change this later by pressing the  button.

From this screen you can add consumers, services and producers with their respective Add buttons: ,  and .

You can also bring up the options menu for one of the component types by pressing one of the options buttons: ,  or . There you can choose to add a component or remove all components.

Finally you can hide or show all components of a component type by pressing the Hide/Show button belonging to that component type: ,  or  .

Components tab

In these type libraries you will find the Components you can add to your current Flow. You can add Components to your Flow by dragging them into the Consumer, Services or Producer tab or by pressing the Add button on the specific Component: ,  or . You can only drag a Consumer Component into the Consumer tab, a Service Component into the Services tab and a Producer Component into the Producer tab. 

To make sure that all Components can connect with each other, we have developed a Message format. This format is called a ConnectMessage. We will explain more about this format in its own Chapter.

But first we will give you a short explanation of the Sections and their Components. All the Components will be explained extensively in their own Chapter. You can also always get a brief explanation of a Component by pressing the ,  or  button next to the specific Component. 

All components

When you want to open or close all categories, you can use the button at the right of the All components header.

All categories will now open and you can see what is inside them. You can now browse the components and pick one for you project.

You can close this view by clicking the button.

Consumer Components

You can enter the consumer type library by pressing the Add button  in the consumer section. Here you will find all components which you can place in the consumer section. A consumer is mainly used for reading a file with data content. The component then put this data in a ConnectMessage.

At the top of the screen you see the top five most used consumers. This is for your convenience. At the bottom you will see the components grouped. The number on the right, indicates the number of components within this type. 

You can only have one consumer component in the consumer section, but next to a consumer you can place another component for other purposes. For example an Analyze Wiretap. This can send information from the message to the ConnectPlaza Analyze Module. 

A flow only works, if there is at least one consumer present. This is a required item. 

Services Components

You can enter the services type library by pressing the Add button  in the services section. Here you will find all components which you can place in the services section. A service is mainly used for transforming the data in a ConnectMessage. The components puts the transformed data in a new ConnectMessage afterwards.

At the top of the screen you see the top five most used services. This is for your convenience. At the bottom you will see the components grouped. The number on the right, indicates the number of components within this type. You are not obligated to use a service. There’s also no limit set for the amount of services you can put into a Flow. However, it is advised to think about a strategy before you start dragging components in. 

Producer Components

You can enter the producer type library by pressing the Add button  in the producer section. Here you will find all components which you can place in the producers section. A producer is mainly used for writing a file with data content. The components puts the content of the ConnectMessage into a specified file.

At the top of the screen you see the top five most used producers. This is for your convenience. At the bottom you will see the components grouped. The number on the right, indicates the number of components within this type. The Producer is not a mandatory item either. It is, however, advised to use one. If you do not add a producer, a null producer will be added for you by the system.  

If you do not need a producer, you can specify a Null producer at the end of the flow. This is not necessary. If the producer is not there, ConnectPlaza will place a Null producer itself.

Working with more than one flow

If you are developing software you probably work with one or more flows at once. This is no problem, you see more than one tab in your ConnectPlaza Constructor interface . The selected tab is white. You can close the tab using the on the tab. If you right click with your mouse on one of the tabs, a menu will open:

With these options you can select to close all tabs at once, close all other tabs or just close the current tab.

Changing the name of your interface

If you will, you can change the name of your interface. If you change the name of your interface, you must be aware of the following.

The name of the new interface, generates a new build. ConnectPlaza Deploy does not recognize that you changed the name of your interface and handles this new build as a new interface. If you are not aware of this and deploy your newly build interface, you will have two interfaces with 2 different names. One is the new interface but the old interface is not removed automatically.

When you rename an interface, remove the installed interface, the one with the old name, from the ConnectAgent with ConnectPlaza Deploy.

WARNING: If you have 2 interfaces for the same connection running on the interface, you can have serious issues of unwanted results. Special characters in the name of the interface, (like #,& or $ etc) are not allowed!