...

BLOMASKY

BenHayat wrote
BLOMASKY wrote
Where Aware does have an advantage is the rules that can be triggered with (IF BO.attr WAS CHANGED or IF BO is new). This can be the huge savings in code that Ben mentioned, Not having to write a trigger or call a procedure each time records are added or attributes are changed.

Because of this narrow focus, I think this would be a very difficult sale. I could be wrong, I am usually wrong, but since there are about a gazillion people who can write stored procedures, triggers in their sleep and with the lack of Aware talent, this might be tough to sell to corporations.

I think what aware brings to the table is the speed of development, speed of maintenance, ease of maintenance when using Aware for the entire application and, when necessary call other REST systems for functionality that aware does not have built in.

Just my 0.02 cents worth.

Bruce [Lee]

The RED section, you are making an assumption that is far from the truth.
You're saying anyone writing client code, has access directly to the Db without an HTTP server (like Aware) as the the middle tier.
Aware as a REST service does T H R E E major things,
1) a complete HTTP Request/Respond system
2) a Complete ORM middle tier between client and DB
3) Last but not least, Aware's Process and rule engine allows us to build sophisticated routines against GET, POST, PUT and DELETE verbs.

We can do all the three above in Node.js, .Net Web API or Java, But aware will save you building the infrastructure, all the data plumbing, Data Context management, Data structure and much more.

What we need is to make sure Aware is up to par with today's REST standards and it is fully secure. The rest is already there.

Perhaps you mis-understood me. I was not saying that anyone writing client code is a DB or has access to a DB, What I am saying is that when your offering Aware as the middleware to a corporation, Your offer is "You don't have to know SQL, you just have to learn Aware" With the limited # of Aware programmers, they would have to commit to training the talent. If they decide to go with Node, for instance, then they will certainly need SQL developers (of which there are many). you said:

Aware as a REST service does T H R E E major things,
1) a complete HTTP Request/Respond system
2) a Complete ORM middle tier between client and DB
3) Last but not least, Aware's Process and rule engine allows us to build sophisticated routines against GET, POST, PUT and DELETE verbs.
the 1st 2 can be accomlished by Node with Express in about 20 lines of code. Yes, we do agree on the 3rd. Aware does provide a robust rules based backend that other tools do not. However, I feel that if you decouple the front end from that, you loose so much functionality. That is why most of the competing low-code solutions, provide all 3 layers in 1 tool. UI, MiddleWare and DB support.

Bruce

aware_support

Support claims that it already does, but I can't find any docs to show how to go about it and program it accordingly.

All you need to is export REST services in your business space. This is well-documented and there is also a tutorial on how to do this. The rest is just making an HTTP call to to a specific URL from the front-end of your choice. The HTTP call will activate the service.

Jaymer

W.R.T. Documentation

Well, there is a tony section in the User Guide that says exactly whats in the video.
Either of those will help you get the format for a REST URL to publish some of your own Aware data.
This is VERY easy.

BUT, there's not one hint of how to use a parameter.
Sure, I can put it on my URL
.../REST/mytestbsv/offices?lic=00818176

but there's no mention or idea anywhere how to use that passed in parm to lookup JUST that office specified ("00818176")
Without a parm, my REST service would use the process "All_Offices" to respond to this:
.../REST/mytestbsv/offices ..... (this works fine)

That process has 1 rule: FIND ALL Office
How am I supposed to modify this FIND to incorporate the requested parm?

I guess once I have this info, I might be able to do a POST? and update data?
or is that not supported?

Jaymer

yes, i realize that.
i'm using Postman.
Aware seems oblivious to any parm data coming in, AND
does not seem to do anything different if I do a GET or POST.
How am I supposed to get to that "request body" info?

I don't see any indicators in either Server or Tomcat window, or in Logging.

AND, I notice that it just sends back all attributes for my BO.
This is where you, in a post a while back, said you need to make another View (or something) of the BO and only have the attributes in the BO that you want to make available to the Service.
How am I supposed to do that here - I need to go to SQL Server and make a View? What if I don't want to involve a DBA to make changes to the database? Is there no way inside Aware to limit the columns that are exposed?

aware_support

BUT, there's not one hint of how to use a parameter.

This is from the How To Guide:
"The default URL where Aware IM will listen to REST-ful requests has the following format:
http://ServerName:ServerPort/AwareIM/REST/BusinessSpace/ServiceName?parameters"

I guess, the document should be clearer on this, but it is quite obvious. Parameters are specified as paramName1=paramValue1&paramName2=paramValue2&...

Where paramName1, paramName2 etc are names of the attributes of a business object that is specified as input to the process implementing the service.

For POST requests these parameters must be in the body of the request.

craigd

Jaymer wrote
W.R.T. Documentation

BUT, there's not one hint of how to use a parameter.
Sure, I can put it on my URL
.../REST/mytestbsv/offices?lic=00818176

It's just like the other incoming services. Add a reference to a BO and then that BO is created when the REST request is received. For example, I have a service that sends out an approval request email with email body containing the REST URL (like url../task_response?taskId=######&taskResponse=####) to approve the task. AwareIM receives that REST request, parses the URL parameters, finds the correct task from the taskID and then approves/rejects based on the other parameters.
The actual ID is a random UUID that is generated when the task IS NEW, prior to sending out the approval notice.

Jaymer

aware_support wrote
I guess, the document should be clearer on this, but it is quite obvious. Parameters are specified as paramName1=paramValue1&paramName2=paramValue2&...

This doesn't need to "be obvious"... because
its clearly defined in BOTH the video and manual.

But thats not what I asked... "How to specify a parm", I wrote:

Sure, I can put it on my URL
.../REST/mytestbsv/offices?lic=00818176

but there's no mention or idea anywhere how to use that passed in parm to lookup JUST that office specified ("00818176")

Let me try again.
Here is my REST URL #1:
https://myurl.com/AA/REST/s1/offices
The "offices" service is tied to a process "all_offices" which is "FIND ALL OFFICE"
So, when I run it, I get a reply page back with a bunch of offices listed, showing all the attributes from OFFICE.
THIS IS EASY.

My 1st Question Mark in my post was:
How am I supposed to modify this FIND to incorporate the requested parm?

I do not understand HOW A URL PARAMETER gets "into" aware and how its referenced in aware.

Using THIS URL:
https://myurl.com/AA/REST/mytestbsv/offices?lic=00818176
-> I'm still using the "offices" service
-> The service still has the same process defined to implement the service.
-> The process uses FIND ALL OFFICE, so how is that supposed to use the passed in parm "00818176"?

This is in NO WAY obvious, or documented, or shown in any example, printed or video.

PointsWell

Jaymer wrote
Using THIS URL:
https://myurl.com/AA/REST/mytestbsv/offices?lic=00818176
-> I'm still using the "offices" service
-> The service still has the same process defined to implement the service.
-> The process uses FIND ALL OFFICE, so how is that supposed to use the passed in parm "00818176"?

This is in NO WAY obvious, or documented, or shown in any example, printed or video.

That seems like a completely different service.

If you consider a query within AIM (ignoring the rest side) if you want to find OFFICE=xyz then that query is different from FIND ALL OFFICE.

Jaymer

BenHayat wrote
I think I said "ViewModel or DTO", NOT an SQL View.
A DTO or ViewModel is a temporary BO Model you create in order to get data from client or send data. This is critical, because during POST (from client), you want to examine all the data BEFORE you put it into BO and during a GET call by client, you ONLY want to send a subset or even a flatted (two BOs combined as a new temp model) to Client.

YES, DTO is what I remember.
After reading that, I created a physical SQL table (maybe a view, but I don't think so).

But w.r.t. THIS discussion, and only a GET, how are you supposed to do this in Aware?
Create a NP BO (based on incoming parms), and write data into it, before it gets sent out? (seems like extra work)
Without a way to specify attributes to return to the REST caller, this seems like a major shortcoming.

Jaymer

craigd wrote
It's just like the other incoming services. Add a reference to a BO and then that BO is created when the REST request is received. For example, I have a service that sends out an approval request email with email body containing the REST URL (like url../task_response?taskId=######&taskResponse=####) to approve the task. AwareIM receives that REST request, parses the URL parameters, finds the correct task from the taskID and then approves/rejects based on the other parameters.
The actual ID is a random UUID that is generated when the task IS NEW, prior to sending out the approval notice.

1) OK, you'd have to assume by now I know nothing of "other incoming services".
Where is this documented?

2) I've sent plenty of links via emails, but not to just send a yes/no response back into Aware. Usually to log in and see or enter data. This is a great idea you have, because one of the things brought up in another thread was the overhead created by the logging in, and that context hanging around (and using resources) until it timed out.

3) HOWEVER, your use, great as it is, still didn't answer for me how your process "parses the URL parameters", which is my main issue right now.

craigd

my use case is: I want to accept task responses via REST (from links in an email but that's not relevant for the example)

I create a BO (called REST_TaskUpdate) with two attributes: UUID (plain text), and Response (plain text choices)
I create a REST service - documented somewhere in docs 8.2 or video with default URL and no special JSON mappings
I create a process to handle in the incoming REST 'GET' request. I add an input for REST_TaskUpdate with the first rule below

If REST_TaskUpdate.Response IN 'Approved', 'Rejected' AND EXISTS Task WHERE (Task.UUID=REST_TaskUpdate.UUID) Then 
FIND Task WHERE Task.UUID=REST_TaskUpdate.UUID

Then next rule

If Task.State='Pending' Then 
Task.State=REST_TaskUpdate.Response
Task.ApprovedBy='Email Link'
Task.ResponseSource='REST'
Task.CompletedDate=CURRENT_TIMESTAMP

Jaymer

PointsWell wrote
If you consider a query within AIM (ignoring the rest side) if you want to find OFFICE=xyz then that query is different from FIND ALL OFFICE.

Its certainly a different Query statement, but not necc. a different SERVICE.
The Service Name is in the REST URL:
Screen Shot 2019-01-14 at 9.43.40 PM.png

Per the MailChimp API, here are two calls:
#1: GET /lists Get information about all lists

curl --request GET \
--url 'https://usX.api.mailchimp.com/3.0/[b]lists[/b]' \
--user 'anystring:apikey' \
--include

#2: GET /lists/{list_id} Get information about a specific list

curl --request GET \
--url 'https://usX.api.mailchimp.com/3.0/[b]lists/57afe96172[/b]' \
--user 'anystring:apikey' \
--include

To me, this is identical to what I've presented in my question.
Here, the service is "lists", only 1 has a parm and the other doesn't.
I would have an Aware process implementing the "lists" service,
and it would check for 0 or 1 Parm and adjust the FIND statement appropriately.

IF {parm1_name} = "lic" AND {parm1_value} IS DEFINED THEN
FIND OFFICE WHERE Office.LicNum = parm1.value
ELSE
FIND ALL OFFICE

Why would I want to have TWO services?
... and duplicate logic in 2 processes - 1 place when its ALL Office and the other when its only 1.
Must I have a 3rd service when I want all Offices in a State and a 4th for City.

aware_support

I do not understand HOW A URL PARAMETER gets "into" aware and how its referenced in aware.
...
The process uses FIND ALL OFFICE, so how is that supposed to use the passed in parm "00818176"

1) You define a business object called ServiceParam, for example.
2) You define an attribute in this object, called whatever you want, for example, ParamStr
3) You define this object to be input to the process that implements the service
4) You modify the process like so:
FIND Office WHERE Office.SomeProperty = ServiceParam.ParamStr
5) You call the service using this URL:
https://myurl.com/AA/REST/s1/offices?ParamStr=00818176

Jaymer

yes
just got all this working.
very easy.

was CraigD's explanation that made it all come together.

EDIT: Support, easy steps. Those should be added to the docs.

tford

Jaymer,

Would you mind sharing your BO, process, process input, and service with us as another example?

Thanks!

« Previous Page