e-cometa Metadata Language
The application, written as metadata
Every e-cometa screen, field, button and process is a metadata record the platform interprets at runtime. This is the language those records are written in, specified as a versioned contract that people, tools and assistants can read and validate.
colOrder
06#Price@color@greyIn the list, a column headed «Price» whose cells take the theme’s grey style.
fieldOrder
050#Stock@POP@IDM310@FILTERrow.Reference=rowtarget.ReferenceIn the form, a «Stock» button that opens menu option 310 in a popup, filtered by the reference of the current record.
fieldOrder
00#Generate@IDP12@PAR@@OUTR@1#A button that runs process 12 and tells it to write to the second of its output resources.
01
One definition, three zones
A screen is a list, a record form and a search panel generated from the same metadata. Each zone keeps its own position, caption and width, so the list can say «P. Cost» while the form says «Purchase cost».
02
Behaviour is declared, not coded
What a button opens, which process it runs, which record it passes and how a column is styled are written in the metadata. Changing them is editing a record, with no build and no deployment.
03
A contract you can validate
Each modifier is specified with the zones that read it, the grammar of its value, how it combines with others, its effect and the ways it fails silently. The specification ships as YAML with a JSON Schema, and every consumer pins a version.
04
Independent of the interpreter
The metadata is the durable asset. Today it is interpreted by a Vaadin frontend and served through a REST backend. The contract describes effects, not implementation classes, so it can outlive both.
e-cometa Metadata Language
What the specification records for each modifier
A label carries its position, its caption and, after the first @, the modifiers the platform reads.
- Where
- The label columns and screen zones that read it, and the kinds of field it applies to.
- Value
- Where the value ends, its grammar, and who defines the valid values: the platform, the theme, the metadata or the deployment.
- Composition
- Whether it has to go last, what it combines with, and what the alignment mark does next to it.
- Effect
- What the user sees, in one paragraph.
- Silent failures
- The placements and values that do nothing, or break, without an error message.
Chapters
- Label modifiers →Specified · v0.1.0-draft
- Screens, fields, menus, value lists and processesTo follow the same path
The specification is the reference for anyone writing e-cometa metadata by hand, and the source the e-cometa assistant uses to explain and check what it writes.