Developing client applications for work baskets and business categories

A set of EJB APIs is provided with the feature pack so that you can develop customized clients for interacting with work baskets and business categories. Client applications access the appropriate session enterprise bean through its home interface.

Before you begin

Client applications that access either the local or the remote EJB API must run in the same cell as the server they connect to.

About this task

The Human Task Manager API provides interfaces for administering work baskets and business categories. Use the Human Task Manager JNDI name to access these interfaces: com/ibm/task/api/LocalHumanTaskManagerHome.

Procedure

Add a reference to the interface of the session bean to the application deployment descriptor. Add the reference to one of the following files: For example, a reference to the local interface might look like the following example:

<ejb-local-ref>
  <ejb-ref-name>
     ejb/LocalHumanTaskManagerHome
  </ejb-ref-name>
  <ejb-ref-type>Session</ejb-ref-type>
  <local-home>
    com.ibm.task.api.LocalHumanTaskManagerHome
  </local-home>
  <local>
    com.ibm.task.api.LocalHumanTaskManagerHome
  </local>
</ejb-local-ref>

Use the JNDI to look up the appropriate home interface EJB API. The following example shows how you might access the local home interface.

// Obtain the default initial JNDI context
Context initialContext = new InitialContext();

// Lookup the local home interface of the local EJB API
Object result = initialContext.lookup
   ("java:comp/env/ejb/LocalHumanTaskManagerHome");

// Convert the lookup to the proper type
LocalHumanTaskManagerHome home = 
  (LocalHumanTaskManagerHome)
    javax.rmi.PortableRemoteObject.narrow(result,  
     LocalHumanTaskManagerHome.class);

Create the EJB object.
Tip: To reduce the number of methods that you need to use in your client application, cast the EJB proxy that you retrieve from the lookup to the corresponding service interface,
WorkBasketManagerService interface or BusinessCategoryManagerService interface. The following example shows this step for a work basket:
```
WorkBasketManagerService wbmSvc = home.create();
```
The following example shows this step for a business category.
```
BusinessCategoryManagerService bcmSvc = home.create();
```
Use the EJB APIs to interact with the work baskets and business categories.