Chapter 2. Jadex Control Center

The Jadex Control Center (JCC) represents the main access point for all available Jadex runtime tools. The JCC itself provides its functionalities via plugins and is therefore quite easily extensible. Currently the following plugins are shipped with the standard distribution of Jadex: Starter, Introspector, Conversation Center, and Tracer. Each tool provides its own perspective in the JCC and is described in subsequent chapters.

Main aspect of the JCC is the project handling. A project is used to store user settings made in the JCC itself (ike window sizes or user settings) and the settings from the various plugins. Project files consist of a main project file (ending ".jpr" for Jadex project) and additional property files for each plugin. In addition, the JCC uses a startup configuration, taken from the file jcc.properties which is by default located in the user Jadex configuration directory (%USERPROFILE%/jadex on MS Windows™, $HOME/.jadex on other operating systems). This properties contain a list of used plugins as well as a pointer to the last project the user worked with. At the launch time of JCC the last project will be automatically reopened.

Note

The Control Center is realized as Jadex agent jadex/tools/jcc/JCC.agent.xml and is started per default when the Standalone platform is launched. To prevent the Control Center being started the -nogui option can be used for the Standalone platform. Using other adapters the Control Center can be launched by simply starting the corresponding JCC agent mentioned above.

2.1. Using the JCC

The "File" menu provides options for loading/saving the current project settings. In addition, the currently opened project name is displayed in the JCC window's title bar (see Figure 2.1, “JCC window”). The "File/Settings" menu item allows to open the platform settings dialog described in Section 2.2, “Platform Settings”. The "File/Exit" menu item allows to close the GUI and kill the JCC agent, and optionally shutdown the whole platform. The "Help" menu provides access to the Jadex help system and the Jadex homepage.

The buttons at the right side of the toolbar allow to switch between the perspectives provided by the plugins (starter, introspector, conversation center, and tracer). The buttons on the left as well as all menus except "File" and "Help" are dependent on the selected perspective and will be described there.

JCC window

Figure 2.1. JCC window