A Comprehensive Guide to IBM WebSphere Host Publisher Version 3.5

8 IBM WebSphere Host Publisher Version 3.5

1.2.4 JavaBeans

According to its inventors at JavaSoft, a JavaBean is a reusable software

component that can be manipulated visually using a builder tool. The JavaSoft

definition allows for a broad range of components that can be thought of as

beans.

Beans can be visual components, such as buttons or entry fields, or even an

entire spreadsheet application. Beans can also be non-visual components,

encapsulating business tasks or entities such as processing employee

paychecks, a bank account, or even an entire credit rating component.

Non-visual beans still have a visual representation, such as an icon and/or name,

to allow visual manipulation. While this visual representation may not appear to

the user of an application, non-visual beans are depicted on-screen so

developers can work with them.

Figure 1-5 Reusable and customizable JavaBeans

Beans can only be manipulated and reused if they are built in a standardized

way. To build beans, Javasoft provides the JavaBeans API, an architecture that

defines a software component model for Java. The JavaBeans architecture

delivers four key benefits:

򐂰 Support for a range of component granularity, as beans may come in different

shapes and sizes.

򐂰 Portability, as the API is platform neutral. A bean, especially non-visual

components, developed under Windows, for example, should behave the

same whether it is run under Windows, AIX, Solaris, or even z/OS, OS/400.