Building an Application

XOTclIDE supports so called component oriented developing. Components are big reusable and complete pieces of code. An application can be build from one or many components that can be also used by another application. The structure of one component is as shown in UML diagram Figure 1.

The component is the container for XOTcl classes and objects and Tcl procedures. Configuration maps organize components to different applications. To allow more detailed and structured organization of code XOTclIDE provide also "procedures groups" and "method categories". The method categories and groups have no influence on methods semantic. Method categories can be effective used to differentiate methods by their kind. It is very useful to keep track of big number of methods defined in one class. In smalltalk such categories are most used:

• access

• initialize

• actions

• private

• persistence

• release

Procedures groups provide also the ability to define the namespace of procedures. If you want to create a collection of procedures in one namespace confirm relevant option in dialog for creating Procedures Group. The name of this procedures group will also act as name of namespace. All procedures in this procedures group will be defined in this namespace. Only one procedure group can correspond to one namespace (and vice versa)