JavaBeans are reusable software components. They are essentially standard Java classes that conform to a specific design format. They offer great flexibility in the construction of applications. They are intended to be used in visual development environments. An icon representing the bean is used to access the bean's methods or fields. Due to the point and click nature of beans, application development time is reduced. Syntax errors are also reduced because the majority of code is automatically generated by the Development Environment.
To use LANDP JavaBeans, you need an Integrated Development Environment (IDE). This is an application that allows you to create, compile, run and debug applications. An example of a Java IDE is Visual Age for Java. This consists of a set of windows that allow you to code an application manually, compose applications visually, use a debugger to step through a program while it is running, and execute your applications in a Java runtime environment.
A set of tutorials are provided to help you understand how to use the LANDP JavaBeans. The tutorials range from a basic application that uses the Supervisor bean, to an SNA application that allows you to send and receive messages from an SNA Host application. They explain, for example, how to make connections to methods, or how to pass parameters.
Before any application development can take place using the beans, we must first import the beans into our IDE . The following instructions describe how to import beans into the Visual Age for Java IDE. For instructions on how to import beans into another IDE, refer to the documentation supplied with that IDE.
The beans have now been imported to the repository, and the component palette displays them when we construct an application.