Application Configuration Overview

To run an application, information must be provided to the Genero Application Server.

Much of this information is common across a set of applications. Rather than have you provide all the information each time you configure an application, Genero supports the concept of inheritance. You define abstract applications to hold the basic information that is common across your applications, and then you configure your application to inherit the settings of the abstract application. There is no limit to the levels of inheritance: an application can inherit from another application (abstract or not) that inherits from another application, and so on. To inherit a base configuration from another application, you specify the other application as the parent.

An abstract application is typically defined first. This abstract application is not executable. It is intended to provide the baseline default configuration for other applications to inherit. You can create as many abstract applications as you require. Abstract applications can inherit a default configuration from another abstract application.

When configuring an application that is to be an executable, you can either provide the configuration details in the GAS configuration file, or you can create a separate application-specific configuration file known as an external application configuration file (one per application). When you add the application to the GAS configuration file, you must restart the GAS for the application to be recognized. When you create an external application configuration file and add the file into a defined GROUP directory, the application is immediately available without having to do a GAS restart.