Introduction

This chapter introduces ProMapper and describes its characteristics, components, and resource types.

1. Overview

ProFrame provides standard business tier and input/output data processing and guarantees consistent database accesses. It converts input data requested from various channels to structures available in the business tier or results processed in the business tier to output data.

ProMapper is a mapping engine used to standardize input/output data for ProFrame resources. It separates input/output data from business tier and allows the data to be defined and edited in channel tier.

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ProFrame Architecture – Channel Tier - ProMapper

The channel tier is a layer for input/output data processing as one of the 3-tier ProFrame architecture.

ProMapper has the following characteristics.

  • Standardizes the parsing method of input/output messages.

  • Check the consistency of input/output messages.

  • Provides rules and error handling for input/output message conversion.

  • Improves maintainability for message conversion functions.

  • Separates business logic and message-related logic.

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ProMapper

2. Components

ProMapper has the following components.

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ProMapper Components

  • Studio

    Responsible for the interface with the integrated server. It is a GUI tool for developers to create, edit, and search resource modules.

  • Integrated server for resource management

    Recreates, edits, and deletes resources created in ProMapper editor.

  • Source generator

    Automatically generates C source code or header files from resources created in ProMapper editor.

  • Runtime engine

    Converts messages to structures or other types at runtime.

3. Resource Types

ProMapper provides the structure resource type that is used in input/output structures and ProFrame applications, the message resource type, and the map resource type for mapping between structures and messages. Each resource type can be created independently.

The following are each resource type.

  • Structure

    Standard data structure used in a service module. It is used as an input/output unit when transferring data between modules.

  • Message

    Defines input/output messages used to transfer input/output data types and lengths and message types.

    The following describes each message format.

    Type Description

    Fixed Length

    Separates fields with a pre-defined fixed length.

    Delimiter

    Separates fields with a specific delimiter. If this format is used, you can set the delimiter in ProMapper editor.

  • Map

    Defines mapping rules between structures and messages.

    The following describes each mapping type.

    Type Description

    Structure → Message

    Defines mapping rules between each structure field when converting a business module’s output structure to a message.

    Message → Structure

    Defines mapping rules between each field when converting a message received from a business module as input to a structure to use it in the module.

    Structure → Structure

    Defines mapping rules between each field when an input/output structure integrates with another module.

    Message → Message

    Defines mapping rules between each field when converting a message to another message.