SmartObjects - Overview

This content applies to legacy design tools (such as K2 Studio, K2 for Visual Studio, or the Silverlight-based K2 workflow design tool). If you have upgraded from K2 blackpearl 4.7 to K2 Five, these tools may still be available in your environment. These legacy tools may not be available in new installations of K2 Five. These legacy tools may also not be available, supported, or behave as described, in future updates or versions of K2. Please see the legacy component support policy for more information about support for these components.

SmartObjects are business entities that bring together data from across applications and line of business (LOB) systems. SmartObjects are reusable objects that surface in K2 for Visual Studio, K2 Studio, K2 for SharePoint, K2 Workspace and K2 smartforms. The purpose of designing and using SmartObjects is not to create a secondary storage to replicate the data in other systems, but rather to provide a way to work with the information as it exists within the respective systems but represented through one or more objects that integrate with workflows and forms. With SmartObjects, the back-end systems are used for storage and retrieval of the business data they contain, but the SmartObjects become the mechanism through which that data is used. The more back end systems an enterprise has, the more useful SmartObjects become. A single SmartObject can combine data from multiple LOB, and a SmartObject can have one or more associations with other SmartObjects.

The following types of SmartObjects are available:

  • SmartObject - Simple SmartObject containing the basic elements of a SmartObject using the K2 SmartBox service
  • Advanced SmartObject - Allowing greater customization of the SmartObject

Following is a list of advantages when using SmartObjects:

  • Create new business entities with no code
  • Use wizards for creating data structures and common data methods
  • Easy business user tooling
  • Entities available through ADO.NET provider and in SQL Reporting Services
  • K2 SmartBox storage engine that abstracts data design
  • Versioned across design and runtime
  • Supports transactions, indexing and large scale data access
  • Supports SmartObject inheritance
  • Supports SmartObject filtering

See SmartObject terminology and architecture for more information.