Lesson 6: Application integration

You have been asked to incorporate the reports from the previous lessons of this track into an application portal. The application portal allows the staff concerned to easily request the reports they need as well as access the applications they use on a daily basis. For this lesson, the application portal was built using frames; however, in most corporate settings there would be an application portal which would be used to launch the application and common reports. The techniques and code required to call the reports are identical whether it is a portal or a simple menu so the sample code can be utilized in either situation.

Task 1: View the source for the application menu

This lesson includes HTML which creates a menu on the left frame and displays the requested HTML and reports in the right side frame.

  1. Copy the contents of the directory <install_root>\help\samples\JSPSamples\JinfonetGourmetJavaDemo to <install_root>\public_html\jag.
  2. Open index.htm in the jag directory in your favorite editor. This HTML file simply creates two frames, namely leftFrame which displays left.htm and rightFrameSet which by default has application/introduction.htm displayed.
  3. Open left.htm in your editor. You will see it is a table with the menu items we want to present to the user.

Task 2: View the application menu

  1. Open a web browser to http://localhost:8888/jag/index.htm. The page is something like this:

  2. Click the links in the left frame to view the introduction or reports.

Lesson 6 summary

In this lesson you have learned how to use HTML to integrate the reports into a menu system. This strategy provides a user-friendly way to access reports from an existing and familiar application interface.