Composite Application Development Components

You create composite application development components to use them as the basis for your business applications in the Composite Application Framework (CAF) environment.

CAF is delivered with a caf.core component, which contains a set of predefined data types and services and is reused in all other applications created with the CAF tools in the SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio.

Application Structure

When you create a new application of Composite Application type, the following development components (DC) are automatically created in CAF:

• Dictionary

  The dictionary DC generated for your application contains table definitions for the business objects and data types that you create. Any changes you make to a business object created in CAF reflect in the tables generated in this application.

  When you deploy the CAF application to the Application Server (AS) Java, all tables defined in the dictionary DC are created in the system database schema.

• EJB Module

  CAF reuses the Java Enterprise Edition (EE) 5 runtime in the AS Java. The business objects that you create using the CAF toolset are implemented as JPA entities and session beans, while application services are implemented as session beans only. The EJB Module DC in CAF contains the source code and the compiled code for these objects. The generation of the EJB components happens transparently when you create CAF objects.

• Metadata

  All metadata of the CAF application, which permits the availability of this information at runtime. Metadata describes, for example, all business objects and application services, relations, and operations.

• Enterprise

  In the enterprise DC, an EAR file contains the compiled code and references to the dictionary and metadata DCs. You can use the client public part of the DC in your Java clients for calling the service methods. Note that you should not use gen_client public part, since it is required for internal CAF usage only.

• UME Permissions

  A UME permissions DC contains a single descriptor used for restricting access to the application services operations.

  Note

  After generation CAF automatically produces files related to the metadata of the application. Part of these files is a product of generation and if they are changed during development they will be overridden upon next generation. These files are located in the following folders:

  • src/packages folder of the Dictionary DC
  • src folders of the EJB module DC
  • META-INF/mdr folder of the Enterprise DC
  • src folder of the Metadata DC

  Note that you should not change these folders, neither add new files to them.

For more information, see Creating Composite Application Development Components .

Packages

Within the CAF application, you can organize services, data types, and business objects together into packages.

Each CAF application contains the following default packages:

• Modeled - a default package for data that you can manage.
  • Application Services - application services of the development component.
  • Business Objects - business objects of the development component.
  • Data Types - simple and complex data types as well as the fault messages of the development component.
• External - a package containing only external services (remote function calls or Web services), and service providers that you can import.

You can create new custom packages or multiple level subpackages for your application services, business objects, and data types. The packages that you create have the same structure as the Modeled package.

caf.core Development Component

The caf.core DC contains predefined and commonly used services and data types that are easy to integrate into any composite application. The services included in the DC and are commonly used entities that span across an entire application. Note that caf.core DC is read-only.

For more information, see Predefined Services and Data Types