Overview of Plug-In Extensibility

N1 SPS is an object-oriented environment, enabling you to easily extend plug-in objects and reuse their functionality. If your environment requires additional features not included in an existing plug-in, you may want to create a plug-in to extend the existing plug-in to provide these features.

The process for extending a plug-in includes the following tasks.

• Verify that the plug-in that you want to extend is extensible.

  The plug-in that you want to extend must meet specific criteria to be eligible for extensibility. For more information about this criteria, see Designing Your Plug-In for Extensibility.

• Create your extended plug-in.

  The tasks involved in extending a plug-in are essentially the same as those for creating a new plug-in, with some restrictions.

  For instructions about how to create a plug-in, see Creating a Plug-In: Process Overview.

  For information about these restrictions, and guidelines for extending plug-ins, refer to the following sections.

  • Defining the Extended Plug-In

  • Extending Component Types

  • Extending the Plug-in Java Classes

  • Customizing the Plug-In User Interface

This section provides guidelines for extending an existing plug-in. For examples of extended plug-ins, see the Open Datacenter web site.