Integration Pane

Last modified: August 20, 2024

Introduction

Use the Integration pane in Studio Pro to use available data sources from the different applications in an organization into your Mendix apps. New apps can be created using shared datasets that are registered in the Catalog. In Studio Pro, this is possible using the integrated functionality of Catalog through the Integration pane.

You can search in the Catalog through the Integration pane to discover data sources that you can use in your app. Via this pane you can add the entities that are published in the registered OData services into your app’s domain model. These entities are called external entities and are different because they enable the connection to the data associated with the entities in the originating app.

Besides external entities, OData services can expose actions that can be called from within microflows, and can define non-persistable entities that can be used as parameters or return types of these actions. From this pane you can drag these actions onto a microflow, where they will appear as a Call external action activity. In this activity you can configure the parameters and result variable. If a parameter or result has an external or non-persistable entity as its type, it will add those to the domain model for you when you add the action to your microflow.

To display the Integration pane, click View > Integration.

In the Catalog, registered published services are referred to as data sources. Published entities will show the Entity set name and are called datasets.

Integration Pane Overview

The Integration pane is used to search the Catalog for entities that can be dragged into the domain model and used in your app and also display the external entities and the associated services that are consumed in your current model.

The following functionality is available in the pane:

Search – Enter a search string of alphanumeric characters to search in the Catalog. The search will be performed on services, entities, attributes, associations, and descriptions in the Catalog.
Filter – By default, the search is performed on assets in the Production environment. Click the Filter icon to include all other environments such as test, acceptance and also the Mendix free app environment Sandbox in the search.
View information on the service, its entities, attributes, and associations – When you enter a search term and browse through services, you can view various information on them.
View services used in your app – Services and the entities that are currently being used in your app are displayed in the Used in your App section and are indicated with a green check-mark in the search results. For more information, see the Used in Your App section below.

Used in Your App Section

When you do not enter search text in the Integration pane, then the Used in your App section is displayed. This shows the consumed services and the related external entities and actions used in the current app. The list of entities, associations, attributes, and actions for the consumed services are shown as for the search results:

For more information on how to add entities and actions to your app, see Adding an External Entity to an App section in External Entities or Call external action.

Searching Catalog Sources

As you enter a search term, all the items in the Catalog satisfying the search string are listed in the search results. This includes words in the service, entity and attribute descriptions, which are not displayed in the Integration pane. For more information, see the Selected Asset Details section in Search in the Catalog.

You can drag the entity from the search results into your domain model and it will be added to your app and displayed as an external entity.

Services that are set to not-Discoverable in the Catalog are not be included in the search results for any user including owners of the service. To consume entities from these services owners must ensure that they are Discoverable.

Wildcard Search

You can perform a wildcard search by entering * in the search field.

The search strings must be a minimum of three alphanumeric characters. Punctuation cannot be used as part of the search term except for the wildcard character * to perform an “empty” search in the Catalog. You cannot use the wildcard in combination with other characters. For further details, see How to Search for Registered Assets.

Filtering Environments

By default, the search is performed on assets in the Production environment. To include all other environments such as test, acceptance, and also the Mendix free app environment, Sandbox in the search, click the Filter icon and check Show development environments:

When the Show development environments is checked, all subsequent searches results will also include those in non-production environments.

Integration Pane Information

The information that is displayed in the Integration pane either when you enter a search term or when you open the Used in your App section is described in the sections below.

Services

The search results and User in your App section show the following information at a service level:

Service name
Application icon for the service (for example, Mendix, SAP, Siemens Teamcenter, or custom icons)
Service version
Environment name for non-production environments

Only the names of non-production environments are displayed. Services in the Production do not show an environment name.
Green check-mark if the service or entity is consumed in the app. If you right-click a consumed service, you can do the following:
- View in Catalog – click this to go to the data source details page in the Catalog
- Go to connection settings – click this to open the consumed OData service document
Gray shield icon shows if the service or entity is validated in the Catalog
Update icon is a blue arrow icon that indicates that there is another version of the consumed service available in the Catalog. Click to update the service that is consumed in the app to the contract that is now available:

If there is an OData service update available, then the entities that are listed are those that are available in that version of the OData service. These entities are grayed-out to indicate that they cannot be dragged into the domain model, as the current contract that is consumed in the app does not have these entities. You must update the contract to the version shown in the search results by clicking the Update icon.

The version number that is shown for the OData service is the latest one that is available in the Catalog at the service endpoint – in the example above, version 1.0.0 of BikeVehicleService is currently consumed in the app, but the contract that is available in the Catalog is different to the one currently consumed.
Information icon allows you to view further details for the service and a link to go directly to the Service Details screen in the Catalog:

Entities, Attributes, and Associations

Entities, attributes, and associations are displayed under the service name.

For any service in the list, you can click Show details to see the full list of the exposed entities, associations, and attributes for that service.

The associations and attributes that are not supported in your Mendix app are shown as non-selectable (gray) and will not be included when you drag them into the domain model.

Entity

If you right-click an entity and select View in Catalog, it will take you to the entity details page in the Catalog.

If you right-click a consumed entity and Go to entity, it will take you to the entity in the domain model.

Associations

The associations that are exposed in the services are listed before attributes in alphabetical order. You can click on the + to see the entity that the association is with.

Multiple associations between the same entities are shown before single associations.

In the following example the entity Customer has multiple associations with the entity Order however, these associations are not supported and cannot be used in your app:

Attributes

Attributes for a service are listed in alphabetical order. If you right-click an attribute of a consumed entity and Go to attribute, it takes you to the attribute in the domain model.

Unsupported attributes are grayed out and are not included in your app.

CRUD Capabilities

If the entity, association, or attribute supports Create, Read, Update, or Delete capabilities and it is also supported by Studio Pro, then it is displayed in the Integration pane. Entities and associations can have any of the CRUD capabilities, while attributes can only have create and update. For more information on CRUD capabilities, see Write Data to Another App.

If an entity does not support any capability, it will be displayed with a yellow entity icon. This results in a non-persistable entity in the domain model.

Actions

External actions are displayed under the service, below the entities. By default the actions are hidden and can be made visible by clicking Show more…

By clicking the expand button next to the action, the parameters and return type of that action are shown. You can right-click and select Find Usages in order to search for all the places the action is used throughout the app.

Actions that are not supported in your Mendix app are shown as non-selectable (gray) and cannot be dragged into a microflow.