Sterling Configurator Visual Modeler architecture
The Sterling Configurator Visual Modeler is designed to conform to the Java™ 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) architecture as defined in Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition Specification, v 1.2 published by Sun Microsystems, Inc.
The Sterling Configurator Visual Modeler is deployed as a Web application that comprises a set of Java classes together with accompanying configuration files, HTML templates, and JSP pages. It must be installed into a servlet container that conforms to the J2EE standard. You can use an existing servlet container that conforms to the standard or deploy the Sterling Configurator Visual Modeler using the servlet container that we provide as part of the distribution software.
The Sterling Configurator Visual Modeler is designed to conform to the Model 2 architecture. In this architecture, three functional components referred to as the Model, View, and Controller (MVC) partition the functionality of the server into logically distinct components.
- Model: This component manages the data and business objects that are used by the system.
- View: This component is responsible for generating the content displayed to the user.
- Controller: This component determines the logical flow of the application. It determines what actions are performed on the model and manages the communication between model and view components.
The following figure provides a logical representation of the Sterling Configurator Visual Modeler server architecture:
The Sterling Configurator Visual Modeler is designed to be flexible and extensible. You tailor the following components of the Sterling Configurator Visual Modeler as part of the implementation of your system.
The following table describes the implementation components and their functions:
| Component | Function |
|---|---|
| JSP pages | Customize the JSP pages that determine the look and feel of the Web pages for end-users. |
| XML schema and data objects | Define the data object schema as a set of XML files. These specify the structure of the data objects and the data sources that provide their content. |
| Business logic and BizAPI classes | These Java classes determine the business logic that processes requests and messages. |
| Controller classes | These Java classes handle incoming requests from customer browsers and determine how the responses are displayed. |
| Configuration files | Use the configuration files to determine the properties of the Sterling Configurator Visual Modeler and control how incoming requests and messages are processed. |
Implementation details are covered in the subsequent sections.