Software AG Designer
Software AG Designer is an Eclipse-based graphical development tool you use to design and test services, the primary elements in application integrations. A service is logic that performs a unit of work. For example, a service could post a purchase order received from a customer to an ordering system, or perform a credit check for a loan application. You can develop these types of services:
Simple services that perform one unit of work.
Aggregate services, in which services call other services (for example, to propagate data from one resource to several other resources).
Composite services, in which a service is wrapped around multiple simple or aggregate services that execute in sequential order (for example, to compose a report by gathering data from one resource after another). The wrapper service manages the flow of data from service to service.
You develop services in Software AG Designer, using webMethods Flow language or other languages such as Java. When you work in Software AG Designer, you are always connected to an Integration Server, a run-time server whose primary function in application integrations is to execute services. Through Software AG Designer you build and edit services directly on the Integration Server. In addition, Integration Server comes with a library of built-in services that you can use in your application integrations.
Service development is an iterative process of building, testing, and correcting (debugging) your code. Software AG Designer provides a range of tools to assist you during the testing and debugging phases. You can test services with input values you specify manually, inspect the results, and investigate errors. You can compare differences between Flow services, document types, JMS triggers, and adapter services and connections, and you can merge the differences between two Flow services or two document types. You can set up audit logging for services and documents.
The organizational unit in Integration Server is a package. A package contains a set of services and related files, such as specifications and document types. Typically the services and files are grouped by function or application; for example, you might put all purchasing-related services in a package called PurchaseOrderMgt and all time-reporting services into a package named TimeCards. You can easily manage (enable, disable, delete, and so on) the entire contents of a package with one action.
Multiple Software AG Designer users can collaborate on an application integration, developing different pieces of the application integration and then deploying the pieces to a single Integration Server for testing. Software AG Designer enables you to lock objects you are working with, and can interact with a third-party version control system (VCS) repository.
Another tool for collaboration is CentraSite, which operates as a shared database of metadata about assets that are stored in Software AG Designer, Integration Server, and CentraSite. Application integration developers can publish services and document types from Software AG Designer to CentraSite, and can drag and drop these assets from CentraSite into Software AG Designer. You can incorporate web services from CentraSite (and other SOA registries) into application integrations you build in Software AG Designer. Conversely, Software AG Designer can create web services from services that reside on Integration Server and can register the web services with CentraSite (and other SOA registries).