CSL Studio consists of
- a graphical user interface to design the services that can be consumed by CSL clients
- a central service repository in which the service definitions are safe stored and from which the definitions can be retrieved
- components to generate client side source code that is used to consume a service. The current version of CSL Studio provides code generators for Java, J2EE, .NET and SOAP applications. A generator for C/C++ will follow soon.
CSL Studio is delivered as
- a set of plug-ins that can be installed into Eclipse (Visual Studio .NET will follow)
- a stand-alone workbench (uses Eclipse as the kernel) that is self-contained and does not rely on an already installed development environment such as Eclipse or Visual Studio .NET.
The following diagram shows the components of CSL Studio:
The CSL Studio product is from a user's perspective divided into two main components, the CSL Studio Designer and the CSL Studio Generator. The CSL Studio Designer is used to design services exposed by Pathway servers. The result of the service design process is a service definition that is stored in the CSL Repository on the HP NonStop server. The CSL Repository is maintained by the CSL Repository Server.
The CSL Studio Generator component is used to automatically generate source code to be used by client applications that consume a service or that need object oriented access to data structures represented by data definitions stored in the data dictionary on NonStop. The CSL Studio Generator may generate source code targeting different programming languages and runtime environments. The current version supports Java stand-alone applications and J2EE applications using the CSL JCA compliant resource adapter. Others will follow soon. In order to generate source code the CSL Studio Generator accesses the CSL Repository server on the NonStop.
The CSL Studio Designer and CSL Studio Generator may be used by different users fulfilling different roles. Both components can be used in different client environments at the same time.
The user of the CSL Studio Designer is assumed to be the Pathway Application Specialist having detailed knowledge about the Pathway servers required to expose a service. The user of the CSL Studio Generator is assumed to be the Service Consumer Developer who has detailed knowledge about the client application (including the programming language and runtime environment) that consumes a service.
In order to fulfill their role the Pathway Application Specialist does not need any knowledge about the targeted client programming language and runtime environment. On the other side the Service Consumer Developer may not have any knowledge about Pathway servers or the HP NonStop platform at all. The link between these two roles is the central CSL Studio Repository.