Creating Extensions

If you are a customer who wants to create extensions for existing applications (composite applications) with already existing extension points, you need to be familiar with the available options when creating extensions:

Create an extension for a product without having the source code (only an archive) — in this case the extension point is not visible in the Composite Designer overview.
Create an extension for a product with available source code — in this case the extension point is visible in the Composite Designer overview, indicated by a special symbol.

Prerequisites

You need to have imported the extension point product.
For more information, see Importing Existing Composite Applications.
All the component dependencies between the extension point product and the extension product in the current development configuration must be properly defined.
For more information, see Defining Products in a Single Development Configuration.

You then you create extensions following the procedure below.

Procedure

Creating an Extension for a Product Without Source Code

Select the development component which will contain the extension, and from the context menu, choose Extensibility Enable Extensibility Configuration .
From the Composite Explorer view, select the extension product and from the context menu, choose Create Extension.
From the new wizard, select the Product without sources radio button.
In the new window, select the extension point that you want to extend and choose Next.
Select the development component that will contain the extension or create a new one.
For more information about creating a new development component, see Creating Development Components
Choose Next and enter the package name that will contain the extension and the extension name.
Choose Finish.
The Composite Designer creates the extension and you need only to implement it as in a normal tool development.

Creating an Extension for a Product With Source Code

The following procedures describe the two possible ways of creating an extension for a product with source code:

From the Composite Explorer view, select the extension product and from the context menu, choose Create Extension.
From the new wizard, select the Product with sources radio button.
In the new window, select the extension point (in this case located in your workspace) that you want to extend and choose Next.
Select the development component file that will contain the extension or create a new one.
For more information about creating a new development component, see Creating Development Components.
Choose Next and enter the package name that will contain the extension and the extension name.
Choose Finish.
The Composite Designer creates the extension and you need only to implement it as in a normal tool development.

The second way can be started from the Composite Designer overview as follows:

Note Note

To review existing relations or extension points for a selected development object, you need to enable centrally the Show relations button in the Composite Designer menu bar.

End of the note.

Select the object relation between the two development objects.
From the context menu, choose Create Extension.
Repeat steps 4 to 6 of the above procedure.