Programming Guides › Programming Guide for Java › Identity Manager APIs › API Functional Model › Model Components

Model Components

The API functional model consists of the following core components:

• LifeCycle interface—Provides custom objects with access to user-defined properties defined in the Management Console. The properties can be applicable to a single custom object, to the entire Identity Manager environment, or both.

  Also provides a custom object with basic implementations for startup and shutdown methods, and optionally, access to the managed object providers.

  LifeCycle methods are called when CA Identity Manager starts up the environment and loads objects (including custom objects), and also when the environment is shut down. These methods give the custom object an opportunity to connect to and disconnect from external objects, and to perform any other startup and shutdown operations that it might require.

  The base adapter classes for the individual CA Identity Manager APIs implement the LifeCycle interface.

• ServiceProvider interface—Provides CA Identity Manager APIs with access to services such as password and encryption operations.
• ProviderAccessor interface—Makes the CA Identity Manager providers available to custom objects. The providers allow direct access to managed object data.
• TaskInfo interface—Provides information about the current task—for example, task creation time, the name and unique identifier of the administrator who is executing the task, and the organization where the task is being executed.
• Logger interface—Lets a custom object log messages directly to the application server log.
• IMContext interface—Extends the TaskInfo, ServiceProvider, ProviderAccessor, and Logger interfaces, and makes the methods in these interfaces available to the ...Context objects in the individual APIs.
• IMPersistentContext interface—Allows custom objects to persist user-defined data within a task session, as follows:
  • Between business logic task handlers for a given task (Business Logic Task Handler API).
  • Across different states of an event (Event Listener API).
  • Between different scripts for a given workflow activity (Workflow API).
  • Between different types of custom objects for a given task (various APIs).

    For example, user-defined data can be set by a business logic task handler during the synchronous phase of task processing, and then retrieved by an event listener during the asynchronous phase of the same task session (Business Logic Task Handler API, Event Listener API).

  This interface extends IMContext.

  Note: The persisted user-defined data is defined within the IMPersistentContext object. It is not the same user-defined data that is defined in the Management Console for a particular custom object or for the Identity Manager environment.

• EventContext interface—Provides read/write access to the managed object attributes in an event, and lets you generate secondary events. APIs that can implement this interface are the Event Listener API and Workflow API.

  This interface extends IMPersistentContext, which extends IMContext. This interface also serves as the base interface for context objects in the Event Listener API.

• EventROContext interface—Provides read/write access to events. APIs that can implement this interface are the Participant Resolver API and Notification Rule API.

  This interface extends IMContext.

The individual CA Identity Manager APIs typically have the following types of components:

• Adapter object—Each CA Identity Manager API has a base class called an adapter. The API-specific adapter implements the LifeCycle and Logger interfaces.

  The custom objects you create with the CA Identity Manager APIs extend this base class. An adapter object contains base implementation methods inherited from LifeCycle for startup and shutdown operations, and also API-specific methods.

• Context object—Each CA Identity Manager API has an API-specific context object, which is passed into the API’s adapter object. The context object inherits core methods through IMContext, either directly or indirectly. Consequently, the API’s context object contains information about the current task, and also provides access to logging methods and other CA Identity Manager services, including managed object retrieval from the data store.

Note: For more information about these components and all CA Identity Manager APIs, see the Javadoc Reference.