Creating and organizing projects

When you create a new HATS project, a set of folders is created to help you organize your HATS files. The highest level folder has the same name as the name you give to your project when you create it. In that folder are other high-level folders that contain objects defined in your HATS project:

• Project settings
• Screen Customizations
• Transformations
• Templates
• Screen Captures
• Macros
  • Macro Event Handlers
• Source
• Common
  • Images
  • Stylesheets

How to work with the contents of each of these folders is explained in this book.

You can create folders within these high-level folders to help organize your project. For instance, as you create screen captures for your project, you might want to create folders under the Screen Captures folder to organize and group the captured screens. To create a folder, right-click on one of the high-level folders in the tree and select New HATS > Folder. To move a file into a different folder, right-click on the file and select move, or you can use the drag-and-drop method. You can create folders under any of the high-level folders to help organize your files.

HATS projects, created in HATS Studio, are extensions of Web projects in the WebSphere Studio workbench. For more information about Web projects, open the Help perspective in the WebSphere Studio workbench and select Application Developer Documentation. Expand the sections as follows to find information on Web projects: Concepts > Projects > Web projects.

By default, all HATS applications are stored in one Enterprise Archive file, HATS.ear. When you assemble your applications and deploy them on WebSphere Application Server (WAS), the HATS.ear file contains a Web Archive (.war) file with the resources to run each application, as well as one copy of the HATS run-time executable code. If you prefer, you can organize your applications differently, either each in its own .ear file, or in some other combination.

Which .ear file your project files go into is determined when you create the project. On the first panel of the Create a HATS Project wizard, you can keep the Use default Enterprise Application project check box checked, in which case project files are created within HATS.ear, or you can clear the check box and specify a different .ear file to contain your project's files. In HATS Studio, you cannot choose a different .ear file after the project is created. However, you can move projects from one .ear to another, using the WebSphere Studio application.xml editor.

To share HATS project files with other developers in a team environment, IBM recommends the use of a repository such as Concurrent Versions System (CVS). Using a repository is easier and more robust than importing and exporting individual projects in zip files.WebSphere Studio supports several repositories. For more information, please refer to the WebSphere Studio documentation and search on "repository" or "CVS."

To move a project, follow these steps:

1. Click the Navigator tab of the HATS Studio to display the .ear files.
2. Expand the .ear file to which you want to move a project. Expand the META-INF folder and locate the application.xml file.
3. Start the WebSphere Studio application.xml editor by double-clicking the application.xml file.
4. In the application.xml editor, click the Modules tab to display the .war files for your projects.
5. Click Add to display the Folder Selection dialog.
6. Select the project you want to add to the .ear file.
   Note:
   Make sure you select the project, and not the .ear file with the same name.
7. Click OK.

If you want to move a project to another machine with WebSphere Studio installed, you must export the project as a .zip file before sending the project to another machine. The following steps explain how to export a project and import it into a WebSphere Studio installed on another machine.

To export the project from WebSphere Studio to a .zip file:

1. Click the Navigator tab of the HATS Studio.
2. Select File > Export to open the Export wizard.
3. Select Zip file, and click Next.
4. Check the box for the project you wish to export.
5. In the Zip file field, type in the destination to where you want to export the file. You can also select an export destination by clicking Browse.
6. Click Finish.

To import the project in a .zip file into WebSphere Studio:

1. Create a new HATS project using the same name as the project you are importing.
2. Select File > Import to open the Import wizard.
3. Select Zip file, and click Next.
4. In the Zip file field, type in the location of the .zip file. You can also select the location by clicking Browse.
5. Click Browse next to the Folder field, and select the name of the new HATS project you created.
6. Click Finish.
7. When the .zip file is being imported, click Yes to all to overwrite existing files.

The new project will contain the original HATS project.

Consider the effect of the following on your server machine when deciding how to arrange your projects:

Disk space

If you create each project in its own .ear file, it has its own copy of the HATS run-time code, of which there is one copy per .ear file. The run-time code is approximately 16 MB, so you can multiply that by the number of projects you have to see how much disk space is consumed on your WAS machine for each project.

Maintenance

If you update a project and re-deploy it, you are re-deploying all the projects in that ear file.

Applying service

If an update is required to the HATS run-time executable code, it must be applied to each copy of the run-time code in each .ear file.

Logging and tracing

Logging and tracing are controlled at the level of the .ear file, not at the individual HATS application level. If each HATS application is in its own .ear file, you can control its logging and tracing settings independently of any other applications. If you have several HATS applications in one .ear file, logging and tracing settings apply to all HATS applications in the .ear file. Messages for all HATS applications in the .ear file are inserted into the same log file, and trace information for all HATS applications is inserted to the same trace file.

See Troubleshooting HATS for more logging and tracing information.

License tracking

License tracking is also controlled at the level of the .ear file, not at the individual HATS application level. If each HATS application is in its own .ear file, license tracking is done independently of other applications. If you have several HATS applications in one .ear file, license tracking is performed for all HATS applications in the .ear file. Information about license usage is kept for all HATS applications in the .ear file, and is inserted into the same license usage file.

See Troubleshooting HATS for more information on license tracking.