A Business Object Defines its User Interface

One of the responsibilities of an identifying business object is to define its user interface rules for viewing and maintenance of its record. The standard implementation for maintaining a business object is that a maintenance portal is used to display a record. This portal includes a "map" zone that displays the information about the business object. To add or make changes to a record, the user clicks a button that launches a maintenance BPA script which displays a maintenance "map".

The display and maintenance "maps" are driven by the business object.

• Schema based UI. This is the preferred option. The BO's schema definition and UI Hints define user interface behavior that results in generated HTML. The schema language includes some basic display attributes such as label and suppress. UI hints provide many additional tags and elements that allow dynamic generation of formatted UI Maps. For more complex behavior in the user interface, for example where javascript is needed, UI map fragments may be defined within the schema via UI hints. In this way only complex UI behavior warrants small snippets of javascript and HTML. However the rendering of standard fields can be dynamically rendered. UI map fragments also allow for derived fields to be included in the user interface.

• Explicit UI map. The BO may rarely define a full UI map where all the information is displayed based on the map's HTML. Note that for a child BO, the maps may be inherited by a parent BO (or any BO "up the chain"). This technique is less flexible for describing a business object and as such is mainly supported for backward compatibility.

A business object schema may include data areas for segments of its schema definition to allow for reusable components. In this case the data area would also include schema attributes and UI hints for the elements that it is including.

Note:

Refer to UI Hint Syntax for detailed information about the supported syntax.

As mentioned in Business Object Inheritance, schemas are not inherited on a child business object. As such, when using UI hints for automatic UI rendering, the child BO must define the full schema with all the definitions. A good business object hierarchy will be designed for reuse meaning that the child BO will include the parent BO schema or alternatively, the BO schemas will include reusable data areas.

By default, the input form used to add or update an entity is presented in the large drawer panel. If the small or medium drawer panel fits better to display this form, you can configure the Maintenance Drawer Size BO option accordingly.