A component is a combination of one or more Interactive Reporting Studio document sections, that contain related configuration information, data models, GUIs, and JavaScript service functions required for performance. The Dashboard Studio Merge Utility is used to combine these sections and produces reusable templates that offer a variety of capabilities and features.
Components are standalone entities that may rely on a framework and other components into which they can be plugged. The framework is a Dashboard Studio template that exports services through the Globals_EIS section. See “Template Structure” in the Hyperion Interactive Reporting – Object Model and Dashboard Development Services Developer's Guide, Volume 5: Dashboard Studio.
The framework looks for components that contain a known set of characteristics or fingerprints. If these characteristics are found, the component is included as part of the regular processing cycle. See Component Fingerprints.
Although JavaScript and Interactive Reporting Studio are not pure Object Oriented (OO) environments, they offer many of the OO features. If these attributes are carefully used, many benefits of OO can flow through to Interactive Reporting Studio JavaScript development.
One component may interact with another through published interfaces. Interfaces are pure JavaScript functions or JavaScript functions implemented as objects that are added to the Interactive Reporting Studio dynamic runtime object model. If components interact with each other, they must be able to degrade gracefully and operate in a standalone mode if their peer component does not exist.
If a component requires the presence of the peer component, the two components are combined. JavaScript provides a Boolean test mechanism for determining the existence of objects and properties alongside the usual try-and-catch facilities.