One of the interesting facilities in the framework is Configurable Object functionality (it is also known as Task Optimization and also known as Cool Tools). The idea is that any implementation can create their own views of the base product objects and services and implement functionality against those new views. For example, in Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing, there is a Person object. That object is used to store and manage information about individuals as well as companies. In the base product you would use the Person Maintenance screen and fill in some of the screen when you wanted to register or maintain and individual as well and fill out other parts of the screen when you wanted to register or maintain a company. This can be somewhat confusing to some customers.

Using Configurable Objects this can be simplified. A business object can be created that is a view of the any object. For example, you could create a Human business object which would cover the aspects of the Person object pertaining to an individual and a Company business object to cover the aspects unique to a company. Even the tag names (i.e. Field Names) in the object can be changed to be more what the implementation is familiar with. The object can also restructure the object. For example, a common identifier for an individual in the USA is the Social Security number, this value is a Person Identifier (as this varies in each country). In the new Human object you can remap the Person Identifier as a Social Security number.

To define a Business Object you use a schema editor built into the browser user interface and use a mapping language to setup the business objects. An example of the language is shown below in an extract of the schema for the Human business object.

As you can see there are mapping as well as formatting and other tags. This information can be built manually or using a wizard which generates the base structure for you to alter. This is all stored as meta data when saved.
Once a Business object is built it can be used as basis for code, other business objects (we support inheritance), called by a screen (called a UI Map) or even as a Web Service.

This is just a start with Configurable Objects as you can also create views of base services called Business Services, Service Scripts used for non-object or complex object processing (as well as other things), UI Maps used for screens and Data Areas to reuse definitions across multiple objects.

Configurable Objects are powerful and I only really touched on them here. Over the next few months I hope to add lots more entries about them.