Skip to main content

ATG - basic concepts of ATG

This blog is for the ATG beginners to get some basic overview about ATG. I just given the ATG concepts as a list of numbered points for the ease of understanding.

1. At the framework level, ATG is a
              java based application platform for hosting web-based applications, as well as RMI accessible business components,
              with an ORM layer,
              a component container,
              an MVC framework,
              and a set of tag libraries for JSP.

2. Art Technology Group(ATG)'s Dynamo Application Server (DAS) is a Java EE compliant application server. DAS is no longer actively developed as ATG recommends using other Java EE applications servers for its products such as BEA WebLogic, JBoss or IBM WebSphere.

3. Prior to ATG 2007, JHTML was used instead of JSP for view purpose. JHTML stands for Java HTML. This is a page authoring system developed at Art Technology Group (ATG).Sun Microsystems licensed parts of this technology and developed the JSP system from the ATG page compilation system.

4. ATG mainly works on the basis of following concepts:
       Nucleus
      Droplets
       DSP Tag Libraries
      Form Handlers
      Repository

5. Nucleus:  Nucleus is server side java beans. To use ATG platform functionality, a web application needs to start Nucleus by invoking atg.nucleus.servlet.NucleusServlet. It’s essentially an object container that manages the lifecycle of POJOs using reflection and dependency injection.

6. Droplet: Droplet is a Servlet and is also a Java bean. Advantage of droplet is that you can have multiple Droplets in a single page. Droplets can be nested and can pass parameters to each other.

7. DSP Tag Libraries: Dynamo Server Pages is a set of tags that ATG provides, that allow us to access the functionality provided by the Dynamo Application Framework such as accessing Nucleus componenets, passing parameters,...

8. Form Handler: ATG Form Handlers are components for validating and processing html forms, calling business components and managing flow between a limited set of pages (e.g. success/error), so a bit like Struts Action classes in that they mediate between the view and model. ATG provides hundreds of readymade form handlers for performing all sorts of tasks, like updating a customer profile, managing your shopping cart, checking out, or interacting with a repository.

9. Repository: A repository is a data access layer, which gives a generic representation for a data store.

10. Logging: ATG also provides a logging framework which is essentially a wrapper over log4j. A nice feature of this is that you can turn on logging for a particular component within a web browser. ATG also provides a performance logging framework which you can plug into components, and is very useful for identifying bottlenecks or problem areas in your code as it lets you browse and drill down into the performance timings and memory usage of components.

Following are the main administaration UIs provided by ATG

11. Dynamo administration: All the ATG components can be browsed and the properties can be modified at run time using dyn/admin. By clicking "View Service Configuration",  you can view the component in different modules in the hierachy.

12. ACC > ATG Control Centre: Browse and edit component configurations, Build scenarios, View and edit repository data. ATG provides a unified view of your application's data through the ATG Control Center which is a graphical user interface that uses the Repository interfaces to allow users to create, query, update, and remove repository items.

13. BCC >  Business Control Center: The ATG Business Control Center is a browser-based interface that you can use to create and edit many of the elements required to set up and maintain an ATG-based web site. This can be used for doing the Search Administration  and Content Administration.

14. CA > Commerce Administration: ATG Commerce Assist is a customizable and deployable customer service application that enables a Customer Service Representative (CSR) to perform the following tasks for an ATG Commerce site: Create and manage organization profiles (ATG Business Commerce only) , Create and manage customer profiles, Create and manage orders,  Issue refunds and exchanges, Process returned items, Research customer activity.


Comments

  1. Nice...and thanks for this article.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good one for beginner. Any change in ATG10 ?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks Sir,
    It helps me, Can I have Some more Stuff regarding ATG For Complete Beginners

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ATG Product Catalog schema ER diagram

Check out the O rder schema ER-Diagram @   http://tips4ufromsony.blogspot.in/2012/02/atg-order-schema-er-diagram.html Check out the User Profile  schema ER-Diagram @ http://tips4ufromsony.blogspot.in/2012/03/atg-user-profile-schema-er-diagram.html If you would like to know the relationship between different Product Catalog tables, please find below screen shots of  Product Catalog schema ER Diagrams.

How to simulate Browser back button

When someone asks how to simulate a back button, they really mean to ask how to create a link that points to the previously visited page. Most browsers tend to keep a list of which websites the user has visited and in what order they have done so. The DOM window object provides access to the browser's history through the history object. Moving backward and forward through the user's history is done using the   back(), forward(), and go() methods of the  history  object. To move backward through history, just do window.history.back() ; This will act exactly like the user clicked on the Back button in their browser toolbar. Find below a sample html code: <html> <head> <script type="text/javascript"> function goBack(){  window.history.back() } </script> </head> <body>    <input type="button" value="Back" onclick="goBack()" /> </body> </html>

Useful windows shortcut keys

Following are the most useful set of windows shortcut keys that I would like to share with you. run commands calc        -->  Calculator  mspaint   -->  To get Paint textpad   -->  To get Textpad if installed cmd        -->  Opens a new Command Window (cmd.exe)  control    -->  Displays Control Panel  msconfig   -->  Configuration to edit startup files  compmgmt.msc  -->  Computer management  fsmgmt.msc      -->  Folder Sharing Management  services.msc     -->   System Services  appwiz.cpl  --> Add/Remove Programs  ncpa.cpl     -->  Network Connections  %userprofile%  -->  Opens you User's Profile  %temp%  -->  Opens temporary file Folder  temp ...

Jsp and CSS size limits that web developers need to aware

Here I am listing some erroneous cases that might occur in your web development phase, due to some size restrictions. JSP file size limit : You might get some run time exceptions that the JSP file size limit exceeds. Please find below the reason : In JVM the size of a single JAVA method is limited to 64kb. When the jsp file is converted to Servlet, if the jspservice method's size exceeds the 64kb limit, this exception will occur. Keep in mind that this exception depends on the implementation of the JSP translator, means the same JSP code may give an exception in Tomcat and may run successfully in Weblogic due to the the difference in the logic to built the Servlet methods from JSP. The best way to omit this issue is by using dynamic include.For example, if you are using                  <%@ include file="sample.jsp" %> (static include),  replace this to               ...

JBoss - how to take thread dumps

Following are the different options in JBoss to take the thread dump. 1. Using JBoss jmx-console :    Got to http://localhost:8080/jmx-console  and search for the mbean " serverInfo " and click on that link. Click the  invoke mbean operation under listThreaddump() method. This will give you the current snapshot of threads which are running in your JBoss jvm. 2. By using twiddle :   In the commnad promt go to <JBOSS-HOME>/bin and run the command  twiddle.bat invoke "jboss.system:type=ServerInfo" listThreadDump > threadDump.html  and you could find the threadDump.html with the JBoss thread dump. 3. Using "Interrupt" signal :  Use kill -3 <process-id> to generate thread dump. You will find the thread dumps in server logs.