The Workshop Studio line of products provides a complete and in depth view of all web application dependencies. By viewing these interrelationships graphically, missing resources and broken links become immediately apparent and application structure diagrams can be created by drilling down through the layers of the application.
Mapping resource dependencies with AppXaminer
To view the application dependencies for a specific resource
In AppXplorer, right click on a file in the web application and select Show AppXRay Dependencies.
AppXaminer will center on the resource and display its immediate dependencies.
Double-click on any dependency to load the source code into the source viewer. AppXaminer analyzes page, action, class, and many other dependency types. Initially all dependency types are active but can be easily reduced.
To display the chain of dependencies for the application
In AppXaminer, click the plus signs next to a dependency to drill down into the project and reveal the page structure of the application
Click the Filters pull down menu in the upper right hand corner of AppXaminer to list the types of dependencies that can be tracked. Uncheck a dependency type to reduce the number of dependencies displayed in the diagram.
Locating missing resources and broken links
AppXRay analyzes the application dependencies and graphically displays the interrelationships in AppXaminer. During the validation of the application if a resource is missing, AppXaminer displays the broken link as a red box. This allows for visual debugging of the application resource links.
Searching for references to a specific resource
To find all references to a specific file in the project
In AppXaminer or AppXplorer, right-click on a file and select Find AppXRay References. A new view will open next to the Problems tab displaying the search results for this resource.
Double-click on a search result to load the file at the specified line reference.
To display the references between a file and its dependency
In AppXaminer, click the superscript number next to a file dependency. This will list all of the references to the dependency from within that specific page.
Select a reference from the list to navigate to the specific reference in the page source code. AppXaminer will only display the first three references to a dependency. To see the full list of references, select the superscript number next to the file dependency and choose Show All References.
Handling unresolved external variables
The BEA Workshop Studio group of products automatically detect the variables available to be used in a JSP page. These variables could be declared in the JSP page itself, for example by using a jsp:useBean tag, or declared externally, for example by setting a request scope attribute in a Struts action java class that is executed before the page is displayed.
In some situations, the IDE cannot detect some of the external
variables, and it reports warnings when they are used in the JSP pages. An example
of this is when a variable is set in a Struts plug-in.
For example, if a lastLoginDate session variable is known to be accessible
at runtime from a JSP page but is not detected, the IDE can suppress this error message by adding a JSP comment before the first usage of the external variable in the page: <%-- <nitrox:var name="lastLoginDate"
type="java.util.Date"/> --%>
This comment declaration will suppress the warnings related to the external
variable usage and adds the variable to the Variables view.
Note that the type attribute in this JSP comment
is optional.
To automatically suppress external variables through use of a suppression in
the JSP page, go to the Variables view and click the pull down menu. Select New External Variable and
add the appropriate information to the New External Variable dialog. The IDE
will then add the variable to the Variables view and automatically add the
suppression comment to the JSP source.
