Method and system for decoupling a calling application from an external application

摘要

A method and a system for decoupling a calling application from an external application in a manufacturing execution system, wherein the calling application interacts with the external application by requesting the execution of one or more external methods defined within the external application. First, the calling application obtains three lists from the external application, namely, the available external method list containing the ordered list of the available external methods, the usable parameter list containing the ordered list of the parameters usable by the external methods, and the signature list containing the list of signatures of the external method. The term signature indicated a coded way to define a method interface. The calling application requests a command to call a given external method from the external application by performing the following sub-steps: assigning, for the requested given method, a value to the position index within the available method list; getting the signature of the given method from the signature list by applying its position index; gathering, from the usable parameter list, the required parameters of the given method as indicated from its signature; and generating the command to call the external method with its required parameters.