OpenEdge developers have the choice of two approaches for creating an invocation file for ABL procedures and functions:

  • Declarative—Capture information about publicly exposable procedures in the source code through the use of annotations.
  • Non-declarative—Capture information about publicly exposable procedures through the use of a utility such as ProxyGen.

The declarative approach is recommended to OpenEdge developers as a best practice. You enter relevant information for making a procedure, function, or external procedure publicly exposable when the source code is written. This information is then stored with the source code, and during the build process is captured as part of the r-code. If you do not want to capture information about publicly exposable procedures with the source code, then use the non-declarative approach.

In OpenEdge, at development time, the ability to drag and drop ABL procedure files directly into a Sonic ESB itinerary is supported. Dragging ABL procedure files directly into a Sonic ESB itinerary eliminates the need to create and import an .esboe file. If your source code is not already annotated with ESB annotations when you do the drag and drop, then a wizard walks you through the steps required to add the necessary native invocation annotations.

The creation of an ESB itinerary based on .esboe files are fully supported. The following figure graphically depicts the creation of an invocation .esboe file, using the declarative or non-declarative approach.