Release 10.1A: OpenEdge Development:
ADM and SmartObjects

ADM classes

The ADM classes, collectively, are a system of Progress include files and collections of internal procedures and functions. Each class is a particular subset of these files that defines a standard behavior specific to that class. The various classes reference each other through include files, and relate to each other in a hierarchical fashion: lower-level classes inherit behavior and properties from higher-level classes.

Figure 1–1 illustrates the ADM classes and their hierarchical structure.

Figure 1–1: ADM hierarchical class structure

The objects derived from a particular ADM class are described according to the class from which they inherit. For example:

Objects derived from the visual class or the classes that inherit from it—panel, datavis, container, field, filter, action, viewer, browser, and toolbar—are called visual objects.
Objects derived from the datavis class and the viewer and browser classes that inherit from it are called data visualization objects.
Objects derived from the query class and the data class that inherits from it are called query objects.

User-defined classes that inherit from an existing class use the same terminology; for example, a user-defined class that inherits from the filter class is a visual object.

Each ADM class is supported by two sets of class files: a standard set and a custom set. In addition to the class files, the ADM provides a set of templates, each of which references the primary include file of a specific class and serves as a base class for developing one of the many types of SmartObjects that you can use, along with basic and ActiveX objects, to build a Progress 4GL application. See the next several sections for details on standard and class files and on templates.

The body of code that supports ADM classes resides in the %DLC%\src\adm2 (Windows) or $DLC/src/adm2 (UNIX) directory and its subdirectories and is installed as part of OpenEdge. For details, see OpenEdge Getting Started: Installation and Configuration for UNIX or OpenEdge Getting Started: Installation and Configuration .