COMPOSITE APPLICATIONS - DESIGN AND MANAGEMENT


Using the Symphony Spreadsheet container
The Symphony Spreadsheet container allows you to add spreadsheets supported by Lotus Symphony to composite applications, so they can exchange data with other components. Lotus Symphony supports OpenOffice 1.0 and 2.0 spreadsheets (.sxc, .ods), Excel spreadsheets (.xls), and Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets (.123). The Symphony Spreadsheet container is built on the Generic container framework.

Note If this container is not provisioned with the Composite Application Editor, see your administrator about downloading it from an update site.

Adding and configuring the Symphony Spreadsheet container

Use the Composite Application Editor to add the Symphony Spreadsheet container to a composite application, and to create and view landmarks and actions.

To add the container, drag it onto the application from the Containers folder in the Component palette.

Specifying a spreadsheet for the container

You can configure the container to work with a local or remote spreadsheet document. Remote documents can be cached locally so that changes made to them are not lost. When the component is reloaded the locally cached document will be used.

To specify a spreadsheet document, use the Composite Application Editor Component Settings tab of the Edit Component Properties dialog.

Specify the location of the spreadsheet document in the Initial File field, browsing for the file if necessary. The location can either be the absolute path of a local file or a remote URL. To cache a remote file locally, click Cache File.

Note You can also specify the location of the spreadsheet in the container configuration in plugin.xml, as the value of the targetBuilder expression attribute. If you specify the location in both plugin.xml and the component properties dialog, the value in plugin.xml takes precedence.

Adding actions

Once you have added the spreadsheet container to your application and specified the spreadsheet you want to access, you can use the Composite Application Editor toolbar to define data exchange actions that should be triggered when specific events occur.

Viewing actions

Use the Display fields button to display cell ranges that correspond to field expressions defined for the current landmark. The displayed fields can be filtered using the other components of the toolbar.

Landmarks in the Symphony Spreadsheet container

Composite application containers use landmarks to define data exchange actions that should occur for different events, in different areas of the contained application. The Symphony Spreadsheet container supports only the Spreadsheet landmark identifier type, and uses sheet names for landmarks. The active sheet name is the current landmark, and actions you specify for that sheet are automatically associated with the corresponding landmark. If you edit the component properties, the landmarks and actions you have created through the toolbar appear on the L andmarks tab, where you can edit them further if needed.

For general information about defining landmarks in the Composite Application Editor, see "Creating landmarks for container components" in the IBM Lotus Notes information center.

For complete details on how to use this container, refer to the documentation for the Composite Application Editor, Lotus Expeditor, and Symphony.