General

Along with Scripting, extensions represent the universal concept for extending AOP applications in a variety of ways.

At this point, let’s first clarify the term “extension.”

In the general sense of the word, an extension is a functional expansion of the application. This could therefore be any type of AOP Module or application that interacts with the application.

In AOP applications, however, an “extension” is also a specific term used to define a concrete instance of such an extension in order to grant it access.

When we refer to “extension” in this document, we often mean both; however, we usually use it as a general term for any type of AOP module.

In general, there are three types of extensions:

• Device Adapter - This type of extension has been available for some time now. No changes were made to it in the current AOP Edition.
• UI Plugins - UI plugins allow Web UI components to be integrated into the application user interface.
• Services - Any form of automation, data import and export, and much more can be integrated into the application as service components.

To develop a feature for the application, you can start with scripting; as the scope grows, you can use external API access and then build it into a fully managed extension.