Key Objects in Valuemation API

Application is the main object in Valuemation API. It is a gate providing access to all other objects, most often through containers. The containers have methods you can use to obtain further objects (e.g. BOs and BOFields) from the Valuemation API’s hierarchical structure. See Valuemation API Object Model to get a overview of API structure.

We can say that container is an object which holds “simple” API objects of a certain type or other containers and provides methods for working with those. In general, all objects whose name ends with "s" are containers. In the text, they are printed in CAPITALS. It can be e.g. the CATALOGS container that holds and provides access (search methods, etc…..) to each single Catalog. Of course, there are some exceptions – like the Catalog object itself that is singular in name, though is actually a container of business objects of a certain BOType.

To learn, how to get Application object, see Logging In.

Being the root object, Application has some of the most frequently used methods in Valuemation API, which provide access to the following main containers:

• CATALOGS – contains default Catalogs. A catalog is an object that holds Business Objects of a certain type that match the search criteria. See Catalogues for more information about Catalogs.
• MODULES, MAINFOLDERS, FOLDERS – objects providing hierarchical folder system. All those are objects that can hold folders or catalogs for organizational purposes. In Valuemation GUI, you can see them in the Sidebar in the left-hand side of the screen. See Organizing Data (Siedbar, Modules) to get more information.
• BOTYPES – holds metadata (definitions) of business objects (BOs) used in Valuemation. See Business Metadata: BOTypes, BOTypeFields for more information about BOTypes.
• METAWORKFLOWS – holds Metaworkflows. Instances of Workflows (sequence of actions used to customize Valuemation) are created and started by the definition held by Metaworkflows. See Running Workflows for more information.
• USERS, GROUPS, ROLES – these containers hold users, groups and roles existing in the system. For more information, see User Management through API.
• TASKS – a container, which holds fixed tasks: precursors to workflows. See Tasks for more information.

The methods dealing with creating and getting the objects from the database are discussed in detail in Getting Main Objects from the Database.

Application also provides various methods, which can give you some general information about Valuemation, for example, about the current user and the version of the application and the application time.