Release 10.1A: OpenEdge Development:
ADM and SmartObjects

SmartObject summary

All SmartObjects have a set of common capabilities that allows them to participate smoothly in an application. They can:

Initialize and destroy themselves.
Get and set properties.
Add and remove SmartLinks.
Communicate using the ADM’s standard communication interface.

These capabilities provide a standard interface for creating and destroying SmartObject instances and for making SmartObjects interact. A procedure object that does not have these capabilities is not a SmartObject.

Note: When the AppBuilder reads procedure files, it looks for specific information to determine whether a procedure is a SmartObject. For details, see Chapter 6, " Advanced ADM Topics."

The ADM provides the SmartObjects described in Table 2–1. Much of this information appears in Table 1–3 but it is repeated in this chapter for reference.

Table 2–1: SmartObject types

SmartObject type	Description
SmartContainer:    SmartWindow,    SmartFrame,    SmartDialog	Holds instances of other SmartObjects, including other SmartContainers. The SmartContainer types are: SmartWindow: Provides a frame and a window for grouping widgets or SmartObjects. SmartFrame: Provides a frame but not a window for grouping widgets or SmartObjects. SmartDialog: Displays a dialog box and three default buttons (OK, Cancel, Help); also used for grouping widgets or SmartObjects.
SmartDataObject	Defines a set of records to fetch from a database and the update logic for those records.
SmartDataBrowser	Browses records and allows updates to records in a browse widget; includes dynamic and static versions.
SmartDataViewer	Displays data fields in a frame and coordinates their display with other SmartObjects. Although a SmartDataViewer can be a type of SmartContainer, it is a highly specialized type and so is discussed separately.
SmartDataField	Displays a single data field in a SmartDataViewer.
SmartPanel	Groups functionally related buttons (for example, navigation or update buttons) on a frame.
SmartFolder	Provides an interface (tab folder and paging mechanism) for selecting pages in a SmartContainer.
SmartFilter	Displays data fields in a frame, to allow filtering of a data set by user-specified selection criteria.
SmartToolbar	Provides a toolbar and/or menu interface to application commands.
SmartSelect	A SmartDataField that performs a lookup on a single data field.
Simple SmartObject	Provides a template for creating new visual SmartObjects.