Release 10.1A: OpenEdge Development:
Progress Dynamics Advanced Development

Repository Manager and Repository Design Manager

The data used by all of the managers is stored in the Progress Dynamics Repository, but the Repository Manager is specifically in charge of all the data that defines the user interface and all the objects that make up the application itself, including SDOs, data fields, browsers, viewers, windows, menus and toolbars, and folders. The Repository maintains a class definition for each object, with default attributes for the object. Each time you or the Object Generator creates an object, a record is stored for the master object, along with attribute value records for each attribute that does not have the default value.

Likewise, when you use an object in a container window, its attributes can be changed or defined at that level, so there is an instance record for each use of each object, which has its own attribute value records for values defined or overridden at the instance level.

The Repository Manager has a complex API used not only to set these values and define all the records needed to define an application, but also to retrieve all the data for an entire window in a single call. The API then caches data for objects that have already been displayed on the client so that they come up even faster when displayed again. Because of the very different needs for design time and run time, there are in fact two Repository Managers, one for a run-time environment, and the other, the Repository Design Manager, for the design-time environment. The first has an API optimized for returning object definitions to the procedures that realize them at run time, in the most efficient way possible. The Design Manager has an API designed for use with the AppBuilder, the Object Generator, and other tools that populate the Repository with data describing the objects in the application.

The object portion of the Repository and the Repository Manager APIs are described in more detail in Chapter 8, " Understanding the Object Tables in the Progress Dynamics Repository."