Before you customize Heritage Coaches, you should have a good understanding of how they work to ensure that your customization produces the results you want.
The runtime rendering of a Heritage Coach involves the following key technologies:
| Technology | Description |
|---|---|
| XML | The design of a Heritage Coach is described in Extensible Markup Language (XML). As you drag sections and controls to a Heritage Coach, IBM® BPM automatically generates the XML definition of the Heritage Coach. You can view the XML while you're building a Heritage Coach by clicking the Code View icon in the toolbar. |
| XSLT | The Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT) transforms the XML definition to the runtime HTML form. The XLS renders a server-side-scriptlet that is run to generate the HTML. |
| HTML | The client (web browser) renders the HTML that the Heritage Coach generates from its XML definition through XSLT processing. |
| CSS | The Cascading Style Sheet (coach_designer.css in the following image) instructs the client how to render the HTML output. |
| JavaScript | JavaScript provides the methods and functions that implement runtime Heritage Coach features, such as dynamically adding rows to a table or governing the visibility of Heritage Coach controls. JavaScript that is embedded in the XML definition of a Heritage Coach is evaluated by the runtime engine before it is rendered to HTML by the web browser client. Both client-side and server-side JavaScript is used to render Heritage Coaches. |
A Developer generates the XML definition of a Heritage Coach by generating files, for example CoachDesigner.xls, Coach_designer.js, and coach_designer.css files. Those files are then rendered, in an HTML format, to the user in the Heritage Coach client. The following image shows how Heritage Coaches are generated:
If you have the required technical expertise, you can use the following methods to customize Heritage Coaches:
- Override and customize Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
- Edit the XML definition
- Edit the JavaScript files
- Edit the XSL transformation rules
The following topics describe some of the customization options most commonly used for Heritage Coaches.