Building Component-Based Applications

Summary

In this chapter, you have learned that the scope of the component architecture extends far beyond the set of components—it includes application frameworks and application-oriented functionality encapsulated in manager classes.

In particular, you have learned about the screen concept and how it can be conveniently used to model your applications around a screen-based hierarchy.

You have also encountered the really productive features provided by the manager classes, and you now know how and when to use them.

However, soon you will realize that this very rich set of functionality made of components and classes needs substantial experience to be used properly and conveniently.

This chapter ends the first part of the book, in which we focused on introducing the component architecture, its features, and how the most basic object-oriented programming techniques can be applied to such features.

The second part of the book will expose advanced techniques and tools that will allow you to exploit the full potential of the component architecture and be able to design and implement large-scale component-based applications in which any aspect of the architecture’s standard components can be customized.