Using Notification Manager › Creating Your Own Invocation Programs › Emergency Mode Processing › Order of Parameters Passed to Your Code

Order of Parameters Passed to Your Code

When Notification Manager invokes a method, it passes all parameter types (architected, method-specific, and runtime) and levels (method, personal, and time block) of method-specific parameters to the method. The Notification Manager API defines the order in which your program receives the parameters:

• Architected parameters are passed first
• Method-specific parameters are passed next
• Runtime parameters are passed last

The order within the method-specific parameters is as follows:

• The parameters from the time block level are passed first
• The parameters from the personal level are passed next
• The parameters from the method level are passed last

The order in which parameters are passed is of particular interest in the case of method-specific parameters because the same parameter may have a value in the Notification Manager database at all three levels and, if that is the case, your method receives three different instances of that parameter. It is up to the method to decide how to handle this situation. The NMVOICE and NMPAGE methods both handle this by using the value found in the first instance of each parameter. (This means that they use the most specific value stored in the Notification Manager database.) Methods that you write can handle individual parameters differently.

For example:

• The method can take the most specific value for a particular parameter by using the first value it finds.
• The method can take the most general value for a particular parameter by using the last value it finds.
• The method can concatenate all values it finds.