JClient Application? Frame and Panels

Question

Hi all,
New to Jdev 9.03 and attempting to come to terms with its use of the term "application" and the best structure for frames and panels.
The term application in the help text and example code seem to take on different meanings. In one its a unit of work (task) or "the order form" in the other its a group of tasks "the order form" + "2 order views" + "1 customer view" lets say.
I hope someone can put some light on this for me. Our testing project concerns the group what I will call for now "OUR APP" its the group above 1 form & 3 views. Using the wizards we would get 4 frames based on the unit of work in the examples or 1 frame and 4 panels based on others.
One example shows example code opening several frames as different applications?? from a master application?? but none seem to show one frame managing several panels as seperate classes as an application???
What is an application?? a unit of work or the subject "the complete group of tasks" ??? and are there any examples of one frame managing several panels built as seperate classes and forms as an application???
any info or examples as how to approach this is helpful. thanks in advance,

Answer 1

Robert,
actually there is no definition of an application in the Java world and it is up to you to define what's your understanding of an application is. If e.g. you build a car rental system, what would you refer to a application, the whole thing, or individual modules like "car maintenance" and "employees" that could run stand alone as well? You can't even say that an application is defined by the package it is in because applications can span over multiple packages.
The JClient wizard always generate some frames and panels for you because it needs to add the items somewhere. Having different panels generated seems to be a good approach in that it avoids writing all Java code into one big fat Java class. So many panels appear in a frame, many frames can show in a window, many windows can make up an application. But one frame with one panel also ca be an application, right ? JClient does not something Oracle specific, but is pure Swing.
Frank
Ps.: My definition of an application scope in Java is everything required to support a specific business need. So for the rental car example above it is the whole of all modules.