In this section we describe how new support for runtime containment and service protocol can be seamlessly added to the BeanBox . In order to test beans implementing the BeanContext interface in a visual development environment, the beans need to have some kind of visual representation. Without such a representation, it would be impossible to manipulate them visually at assembly and design time.
Several difficulties arise.
When a new ContextBean is added to the BeanBox there is the question of how to represent that bean visually. The visual representation can be provided either by the bean author or by the development environment. In that case, there are two hierarchies to maintain and a possibility for inconsistency between the two. When hide invisible beans mode is selected or design mode is disabled , the labels representing non-visual beans are hidden. When enhancing the BeanBox with support for runtime containment and services protocol, there is also the BeanContext or BeanContextProxy case to consider.