9.1.1 What are Web Components?
Web component technology is a powerful way of enhancing your LANSA Web Function applications. It allows you to create individual components (small portions or modules of an application), that can be embedded and re-used in your Web Function application.
For example, you can create a Web component, which is:
- A drop down list that displays State or Province codes,
- A single image or a group of buttons,
- A static HTML page,
- A complete menu with links to all of your applications.
You can create a Web component for almost any part of your application.
The Web component technology greatly simplifies the HTML pages and significantly reduces the maintenance efforts because components are centrally defined once and are automatically reused. Web components are an extension to the basic LANSA architecture and can be thought of as a repository for building Web Function applications. Components can be updated and generated automatically. Changes can be made to components without having to recompile RDML functions or edit HTML pages. The Web component technology in LANSA Web Functions allows you to easily customize your HTML pages.
The e-Business Framework Wizard uses Web components extensively.
LANSA for the Web supports the following types of Web components:
- File
- Banner
- Page
- Script
- Text
- Web Link
- Visual
The type of LANSA Web component determines how LANSA handles the component.
LANSA Web components are used in conjunction with the <RDML COMPONENT> tag. This tag instructs LANSA to process the Web component indicated by the tag. For more details, refer to <RDML COMPONENT>.