Introduction

The IBM® Cast Iron® Connector Development Kit (CDK) Developer's Guide is for developers who want to use the Cast Iron Studio (Studio) development platform to develop and deploy plug-in connectors that extract data from application systems or other data sources..

Connectors enhance the core functionality of Studio by exposing the API of an external application to the Cast Iron development platform. API's extend the scripting engine with new libraries and object types and publishes notification events from the external system to a Cast Iron physical or virtual integration appliance. Cast Iron appliances support connecting to endpoints of many types including FTP, SFTP, HTTP, HTTPS, Email (SMTP, POP), SAP, MQ, Web Services and many commercial database systems.

Each connector has an associated XML descriptor file that allows the connector to be used in Studio at design time. XML schema definition (XSD) files define the elements and attributes of the XML file.

The Cast Iron development platform features a CDK Connector Wizard that guides you through the development process. Studio provides an intuitive drag-and-drop interface that can dramatically shorten your development time.

This guide provides an overview of connectors, introduces the Cast Iron development platform components and supplies the step-by-step procedures you require to develop and deploy your own connectors.

Prerequisites

Much of the work involved in developing a connector takes place inside Studio, meaning that you should have a working knowledge of Studio and the Cast Iron products. You should also be familiar with the following languages and file formats:

  • Extensible Markup Language (XML)
  • Web Services Description Language (WSDL)
  • Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT)
Note: For many activities, Studio supports a "discovery" process to determine the structure of parameters sent to, or received from an endpoint. If your input activity will be discovered at design time, you must utilize an abstract WSDL or schema element type. Declaring an element as abstract requires the use of a substitution group. If an abstract version is not available, you must modify your WSDL file or schema. Your abstract file is then substituted for the actual data type at design time. For more information on abstract files, see Using the Add Activities window.



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Timestamp icon Last updated: Thursday, December 17, 2015


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