Component Basics - Adobe 38040334 - Dreamweaver CS3 User Manual

Chapter 20: Components
Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 supports the creation of many of the most popular types of compo-
nents. In addition, Dreamweaver lets you extend the types of components that appear in the
Components panel.

Component basics

Programmers use various strategies to encapsulate their work. You can think of encapsulation as
creating an entity that exists in a virtual black box. To use it, you don't need to know how it works;
you only need to know what information it needs to do its job and what information it will output
after its job is complete. For example, a programmer might create a program that gets infor-
mation from an employee database. Anyone, including other programs, can then use that
program to query that database. Thus, the program is reusable.
Experience shows that well-organized programs that use encapsulation are easier to maintain,
enhance, and reuse. Different technologies offer programmers different ways to accomplish this
encapsulation, and different names describe these strategies: functions, modules, and others.
Dreamweaver uses the term component to refer to some of the more popular and modern encap-
sulation strategies, including web services, JavaBeans, and ColdFusion components (CFCs). So,
when users build web applications in Dreamweaver, the Components panel assists them in using
available web services, JavaBeans, and CFCs.
Components from recent technologies (such as web services, JavaBeans, or CFCs) can describe
themselves. Usually there is information about the component embedded in the files that
constitute the component. The ability of a component to publish or share this information is
called introspection. In other words, a program such as Dreamweaver can ask a component for a
list of the functions it exposes (that is, functions that can be invoked from another program).
Depending on the technology in use, a component can reveal other information about itself. For
example, a web service might describe new data types.