The scriptlet’s code is called by Aware IM at run time when it calculates the report in which the scriptlet is present. The purpose of the scriptlet component is to calculate and set the value of the element that it is attached to. When the scriptlet is called it is given a call-back interface IReportEnvironment representing the environment in which the scriptlet is running. This interface exposes the method setElementValue, which has to be called by the scriptlet when it finishes the necessary calculations.

The scriptlet is a class that must implement IReportScriptlet interface. Methods of this interface are called at various times during the report calculation. The scriptlet designer must provide a non-empty implementation of those methods that are called at the times that the scriptlet will be calculating its values. The methods exposed by the IReportScriptlet interface are described below. As mentioned before all methods are given a reference to the IReportEnvironment interface. Also all methods are supposed to throw an exception if error occurs.