Application Product Line Components

An application product line is the full set of metadata and data that an instance of Lawson applications needs to run.

In general, this document does not deal with applications. However, a basic understanding of application structure is critical to understanding the Lawson system as a whole.

An application product line has three main types of data:

  • Application

  • Product line dictionary

  • Data area

Application

The application portion of a product line contains the following:

  • Application program source code and executables.

  • Program forms. Each program has one or more related forms that are used to access and update business data.

  • Some types of application and Environment menus.

Product Line Dictionary

In the Lawson system, a dictionary is a flat file that contains metadata (data about data) for a product line, including:

  • The names of data tables and a description of the fields in each table including field name and type.

  • The time stamp, which indicates when the data dictionary was built.

  • The name of the database that contains it (for example, DB2) and the data itself.

  • How to access the data (that is, the indexes that are defined to access it).

Data Area

A data area has the following components:

  • The data itself, which consists of the following types of information:

    • Files (also known as tables).

    • Records (also known as rows) in a data table.

    • Fields (also known as columns) in a data table.

    • Elements define the properties of fields such as data type and size. An element does not contain data and can refer to different fields in multiple files within one product line. An element belongs to the entire product line; therefore its name is unique within the product line. For example, COMPANY is an element that defines data as four digits. The EMPLOYEE file includes a four-digit field called COMPANY that maps to the element COMPANY.

      Note: Element definitions, including information about the data areas they belong to, are physically located in the GEN database but are referenced by application product lines.

  • The data area dictionary, which includes the name of the data area, and the location and size of the data tables.

  • Data IDs, which are subareas of data areas and contain pointers to data.

A product line may have single or multiple data areas.

  • In a product line without multiple data areas or data IDs, the data dictionary is contained in a single file.

  • In a product line with multiple data areas, the dictionary has a hierarchical structure and each data area has its own dictionary.

The following diagram shows a multiple data area installation. If additional product lines were included in the diagram, the tree structure would be the same but there would be more branches at the product line level.

Illustration: Multiple data areas