Development Object

A Uniface Development Object is an abstract data type that defines the characteristics and behavior of a logical application unit, such as a Component, Field, Message, Library, and so on.

During the build process, development objects may be compiled into executable runtime objects or used to generate other runtime objects that can be used in the deployed application or during development.

There are many types (or specializations) of Development Object. Some describe application components (such as Dynamic Server Page and Service), others describe the application data (such as Modeled Entity and Modeled Field), and yet others can be shared across the application (such as Message and Global ProcScript).

Characteristics

Object type code:
Main Development Object? No
Part of: Development Object
Contains: Development Object, Property, Code Container
Generalization:
Specializations: Main Development Object and subobjects of main development objects:
Compilation output: Depends on the type of object
URI format:

Development Object is an abstract, complex data type that has the following characteristics:

  • It can have a parent development object
  • It can have can have three types of children:
    • Properties, including Name, Description and Comment, and other properties that are specific to its type
    • Code containers, which are type-specific properties that hold ProcScript, JavaScript, or HTML
    • Other development objects
  • It has a case-insensitive name that is unique for its type.

    Each object is uniquely identified by its type, parent names, and name. Objects of a different type can have the same name.

    For example, a message and a component can both have the name AABBCC, but they are different types of objects, so the identifier is unique (msg:AABBCC vs cpt:AABBCC).

    Important: All types of component have the same type (cpt), so a Dynamic Server Page cannot have the same name as a Service.