1. When creating the report’s datasource you have to use the same name you use in your jACOB application. Otherwise jACOB will not be able to use your Report.
2. Create your report and specify the required parameters.
3. When having finished your report, upload the .rptdesign file to a document field in your application. (e.g. a config table)
4. The following code opens the report, hands over a parameter and returns a .pdf

	BirtReport rpt = new BirtReport(cnfrec.getDocumentValue("report"));
	rpt.setParameterValue("mypar", currentRecord.getStringValue("pkey"));
	byte[] barr = rpt.createPDF();
	context.createDocumentDialog(null, "doc.pdf", barr).show();

• Tree browser with drag and drop.
• Radio buttons to select functions.
• Hideable Forms
• Enum fields with I18N
• Tooltips. A combination of error messages and tips on how to correct.
• Foreign fields as combo box.
• Breadcrumb control.
• Single sign on functionality through CAS.
• Embedded transactions
• Dynamic changeable forms.
• Full text search on long text fields.
• Distinguish between primary and secondary DB’s in multiple databases, dependent on who owns the data.

Installation instructions can be found at openjacob.org

The Java Docs are here.

When the servlet calls the entry point’s Url then we have everything UTF-8 encoded and additionally used URLEncoder.encode(URL).

On the jacob side the Data arrives as ISO8859-1 although everything in Jacob appears to be UTF-8. But a simple

String data1= new String(properties.getProperty("data1").getBytes("ISO8859-1"),"UTF-8");

does the job.

Let’s assume the following database schema

We want to be able to delete records from the tables hauptprf and/or teilprf. Therefore we need to  add some code to the classes HauptprfTableRecord and TeilprfTableRecord both attached to the respective tablealias.

HauptprfTableRecord

public void afterDeleteAction(IDataTableRecord tableRecord, IDataTransaction transaction) throws Exception
{
IDataTable hprdet = tableRecord.getAccessor().getTable(Hauptprfdet.NAME);
hprdet.qbeSetKeyValue(Hauptprfdet.hauptprf_key, tableRecord.getValue(“pkey”));
hprdet.fastDelete(transaction);

IDataTable hprdok = tableRecord.getAccessor().getTable(Hauptprfdok.NAME);
hprdok.qbeSetKeyValue(Hauptprfdok.hauptprf_key, tableRecord.getValue(“pkey”));
hprdok.fastDelete(transaction);

IDataTable hprgeb = tableRecord.getAccessor().getTable(Hauptprfgeb.NAME);
hprgeb.qbeSetKeyValue(Hauptprfgeb.hauptprf_key, tableRecord.getValue(“pkey”));
hprgeb.fastDelete(transaction);

IDataTable teilprf = tableRecord.getAccessor().getTable(Teilprf.NAME);
teilprf.qbeSetKeyValue(Teilprf.hauptprf_key, tableRecord.getValue(“pkey”));
teilprf.searchAndDelete(transaction);
}

TeilprfTableRecord

public void afterDeleteAction(IDataTableRecord tableRecord, IDataTransaction transaction) throws Exception
{
IDataTable teildet = tableRecord.getAccessor().getTable(Teilprfdet.NAME);
teildet.qbeSetKeyValue(Teilprfdet.teilprf_key, tableRecord.getValue(“pkey”));
teildet.fastDelete(transaction);

IDataTable teildok = tableRecord.getAccessor().getTable(Teilprfdok.NAME);
teildok.qbeSetKeyValue(Teilprfdok.teilprf_key, tableRecord.getValue(“pkey”));
teildok.fastDelete(transaction);

IDataTable colldat = tableRecord.getAccessor().getTable(Collecteddata.NAME);
colldat .qbeSetKeyValue(Collecteddata.teilprf_key, tableRecord.getValue(“pkey”));
colldat .fastDelete(transaction);
}

The only important thing is that fastDelete offers great performance but DOES NOT trigger any other hooks. Therefore deleting the teilprf data from the hauptprf  function contains the searchAndDelete function ! All the other delete operations can be done using fastDelete since the respective tables are the last in the hierarchy.

1. Create a new blank jACOB Application

2. Create a datasource in the jACOB Admin Application that points to the desired database you want to reverese engineer.

3. Call the entry point
http://localhost:8080/jacob/cmdenter?entry=FetchDatasourceSchemaInfo&app=admin&user=USERNAME&pwd=PASSWORD&dataSource=DATASOURCE&newapp=NEWAPP
Where you replace localhost:8080 with the real jACOB-server name and port.
Replace DATASOURCE in the url with the name of the data source schema information should be fetched from.
Replace NEWAPP in the url with the desired application name of the generated JAD file.

4. If everything works then your browser shows the new JAD.

Now show the source code of this page and paste the content into your application.jad

I should “only” meet a few requirements.

1. Open Source – not because I didn’t want to spend money but because I wantet to be free.
2. Web based – I was tired of hassling aoround with all sorts of dependencies.
3. Platform idependent – both for development and runtime.
4. Multilanguage
5. a GUI Designer

What I’ve been using (or tried to use)  for all sorts of small apps from around 2005 was:

• CodeCharge Studio -misses 1,3,4
• ActiveGrid – missed 4 – and was discontinued – successor WaveMaker
• Wavemaker – missed only 4 – but sloooow designer
• RubyOnRails – missed 4, 5
• AwareIM – missed 4 – nice tool, easy to learn, solid apps but _very_ hard to extend
• Not to mention those that promised a lot but took hours to install…..

I don’t know if any of my unmet requirements from the above products have changed in the meantime.

But someday in spring 2008 I stumpled upon Open-Jacob. It was some sort of “love at the first sight”. It simply does everything I wanted to have.

The first application built with Open-Jacob had its go-live yesterday and more are to come.

Thanks a lot to Tarragon-Software, Achim Böken, Andreas Sonntag and Andreas Herz for building such a great tool !