Groovy MDM

Success!  Well, at least a successful first step.  My first application retrieves person data from MDM Server (calling the searchPerson service) and presents the result list in a Dojo data grid and form:

More importantly, this required zero programming.  I did some configuration and built several application artifacts with tools.  That’s all. The key, high level tasks included:

1. Define a “resource” called person and it’s attributes:  WebSphere sMash provides a simple GUI tool for modeling resources, i.e. assigning a name, defining attribute names, data types, constraints, etc.  The tool generates a JSON (Java Script Object Notation) representation of the model.
2. Configure a “wrapper” that maps this resource model to the MDM Server BObj, TCRMPersonBObj: A Groovy wrapper, among other things, associates resource model attributes with their corresponding BObj xPaths.  I used the sMash file editor to manually enter a JSON representation of the mappings.
3. Configure a “handler” that maps the sMash RESTful web services to MDM Server BObj’s and services: A Groovy handler associates sMash RESTful web services, i.e. onList(), onRetrieve(), onDelete(), onUpdate(), and OnCreate(), to the corresponding MDM Server services.  Again, I used the sMash file editor to manually enter a JSON representation of the mappings.  In this case, I mapped only onList() to searchPerson.
4. Overwrite the resource handler script for person generated by sMash with the generic MDM handler services: This delegates the responsibility for retrieving and updating the data to the generic MDM handler class.
5. Test the handler services: Testing the services with “Poster”, a Firefox plug-in, verified the connectivity to MDM Server and allowed me to inspect the retrieved BObj’s.
6. Build the client UI: The UI tools in sMash made this the easiest part of the whole exercise.  I created an html page and defined a ZRM data store (an abstraction for the person resource) with a few clicks.  After dragging and dropping a couple Dojo widgets onto the page and setting some properties, I was done.
7. Test the application: I launched the application from the sMash development environment and saw the MDM data on my screen.

Anyone familiar with the MDM Server transactions and BObjs can do this kind of configuration very easily.  And those who don’t know MDM Server at all, can learn to build the GUI’s from pre-configured handlers in sMash.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 24th, 2009 at 11:23 pm and is filed under Zero Programming Experiment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.