Branch Transformation Toolkit components that run on Java(TM) clients
interact with each other to provide the Java client navigation function, pass client
requests to the application presentation layer, and enable Java clients
to present a response to the request.
The following components run on Java clients:
- Contexts
- A context is the container for the data elements needed by a business
entity such as a user or branch. Contexts have a hierarchy to enable these
business entities to share common data. For example, in a branch each teller
would have a context that contains data about the teller but they would all
share the branch context, which would contain data about the branch. The branch
context is the parent and each teller context is a child in the relationship.
- Formatters
- A formatter transforms a string into data in a context or data in a context
to a String. This enables an application to move data into and out of the
context hierarchy and to create messages to send to a host, financial device,
or service in a format understood by the message's destination. The toolkit
provides an extensive set of the most commonly needed formatters for financial
service applications including EBCDIC, date, numeric, packed, binary, and
other formatters.
- Data elements
- A data element is a field that contains a value or a collection of other
data elements. Certain data elements are type-aware. The typed data elements
represent business objects such as Date, ProductNumber, and Money. Each typed
data element has an associated property descriptor, which provides information
about the data such as its type, its validator, and its set of converters.
- Flows
- A flow is a particular route through a business process or presentation
sequence in the application presentation layer. A flow processor handles a
specific flow and it is typically with many branches and compound and complex
conditions on those branches. Within a flow, there is a sequence of states.
These states can have actions. An action is a task that the flow processor
performs such as display a view or invoke a business process in the application
logic layer.
- Externalizers
- An externalizer is an object factory that uses definitions in an external
file to instantiate a specific toolkit entity. The toolkit provides externalizers
for contexts, data elements, formatters, services, and flow processors. The
definition files are ASCII files using XML syntax. This makes configuring
and customizing these defined objects (or implementing new ones) possible
with something as simple as a basic text editor although the Development Workbench
provides an easier and more controlled environment for this editing.
- Events
- An event is how components within the application presentation layer communicate
with each other. A notifier is the sender of an event. A handler, as the receiver
of that event, is responsible for consuming the event or propagating it to
other handlers. An Event Manager acts as the event controller between notifiers
and handlers to manage both local and remote events.
- Exceptions
- A toolkit exception enhances the standard Java exception mechanism to facilitate applications
accessing information about the exception.
- Visual beans
- The visual beans facilitate the development of a GUI for Java clients
by adding features and properties to normal visual beans to support financial
applications such as date fields, numeric fields, or account data entry fields.
The navigation controller provides a way for the Java clients to have a multiple view GUI.
- Desktop
- The Desktop is a fully configurable desktop for Java clients.
It contains most of the features commonly required of this type of user interface.
It includes many common UI features and can by dynamically personalized to
the current user.
- Operations
- An operation is what Java clients use to launch business processes
in the application logic layer. An invoker maps the client operation to the
business process.
- Generic Pool
- The Generic Pool service enables multiple client operations to share certain
objects (classes and services), which makes the objects reusable. This reuse
reduces the average time to execute these operations and also reduces the
garbage collection work.
- Trace Facility
- The Trace Facility provides a way to see what is happening with an application
while it is running. The information it logs can be used to solve problems
during development and during runtime.
- Financial device services
- The Branch Transformation Toolkit provides services to access the most
commonly used financial devices in financial service applications, including
financial printers, check readers, magnetic stripe readers, chip card devices,
and passbook printers. Financial device services allow applications to access
devices that are compliant with WOSA/XFS and IBM(R) LANDP(R) protocols. The toolkit
also supplies 100% Java access to specific financial devices
following the current specifications of the J/XFS Forum.
- JXFS Service
- The JXFS Service enables applications to access devices that use J/eXtensions
for Financial Services (J/XFS). The JXFS Service uses the typical interface
between applications and J/XFS devices: Device Control (DC) and Device Manager
(DM).
- LANDP MSR/E
Device
- The LANDP MSR/E
Device service enables applications to access a magnetic stripe reader and
encoder (MSR/E).
- WOSA Device
- The WOSA Device service enables applications to use WOSA/XFS to access
financial devices. These devices include financial printers, identification
cards, and teller assist units