About System Manager, Integrated Test Environment, and Collaboration Debugger

System Manager, Integrated Test Environment, and Collaboration Debugger are plug-ins that run within the Eclipse-based tooling frameworks named WebSphere Studio Workbench and WebSphere Studio Application Developer Integration Edition. This section provides an overview of the Eclipse framework, WSWB and WSADIE, and of the IBM WebSphere InterChange Server tools plug-ins.

About the Eclipse Platform

The Eclipse Platform is an open-source integrated development environment (IDE) for the creation of tools. It provides tools developers with a development kit and runtime that enables the developer to write plug-ins that allow the user to work with a particular type of resource.

IBM has two branded versions of the Eclipse platform--WebSphere Studio WorkBench (WSWB) and WebSphere Studio Application Developer Integration Edition (WSADIE).

Plug-ins

Plug-ins are the modular extensions that software vendors develop to add functionality to an Eclipse-based workbench. Plug-ins encapsulate the perspectives, editors, and views that enable users of the workbench to work with particular types of resources.

For instance, one plug-in might provide the features of a text editor. Another plug-in might provide the features of an HTML editor. The WebSphere InterChange Server plug-ins provide the features to work with integration components. The benefit of this plug-in model is that the user has a single tool in which they can work with many types of resources, rather than using dedicated tools for each type of resource.

To install a plug-in, you extract one or more compressed archives that represents the plug-in into the plugins directory within the product directory of your workbench. The WICS plug-ins are extracted into the plugins directory by Installer.

IBM provides the System Manager, Integrated Test Environment, and Collaboration Debugger plug-ins with WebSphere InterChange Server to work with business integration resources. These plug-ins are embodied by a number of uncompressed directories in the plugins directory of your workbench within the com.ibm.btools namespace. Much of the primary interface you will use in creating integration components--the System Manager--is encompassed in the contents of the com.ibm.btools.csm plug-in directory, for instance.

Workbench

The workbench is the collection of perspectives, editors, and views that are active in your Eclipse-based tooling framework, which are in turn affected by the collection of plug-ins you have installed and enabled. It is a general term used to refer to the Eclipse-based interface in which you are working, independent of the fact that the interface changes depending on how you use it.

Workspace

A workspace is a container for projects. The workspace is a directory in the file system where, by default, you are prompted to store your projects.

Projects

Projects are user-defined groups of resources, and are ultimately directories in the file system.

One of your first tasks when developing a business process interface is to define an integration component library, which is a project that contains the components you develop. When you create the integration component library you specify the location in the file system where it is stored (by default this is the workspace directory). A folder is created in that location with the name you specify for the integration component library and within the library folder a number of folders is created for each type of integration component (for instance, there are folders named Maps, BusinessObjects, and Connectors).

You also create projects named user projects. User projects are collections of shortcuts that reference integration components. You must add integration components to a user project from integration component libraries in order to deploy components to an InterChange Server instance. Besides from being required to deploy components to a server, user projects are designed to allow you to functionally group components together. An integration component library is a collection of all components you might need to work with, but a user project is designed to let you group together the components you are working on for a specific interface.

Resources

Resources are projects, files, and folders that you work with in the workbench.

When you create an integration component, it is stored as a file in the appropriate folder within the integration component library project. The different types of integration components are stored with different extensions (for instance, maps are stored with an extension of .cwm whereas collaboration templates are stored with an extension of .cwt), but they are all stored in XML format.

Some components, such as maps and collaboration templates, also have Java source files in addition to their definition files.

Perspectives

A perspective is a grouping of editors and views designed to provide a particular user role with what it requires.

For instance, the System Manager perspective provides views for working with InterChange Server instances and integration component libraries and editors for collaboration object definitions and database connection pools. The Integrated Test Environment perspective has views for client emulation interfaces and business object test data, and editors for test units.

Editors

Editors allow you to open, save, and close resources in the workbench.

System Manager, for instance, has an editor in which you modify collaboration objects and another in which you configure InterChange Server.

Views

Views provide information about the resources with which you are working in the workbench.

System Manager, for example, has the WebSphere Business Integration System Manager view, which is the view to integration component libraries and user projects, and the InterChange Server view, where you work with the InterChange Server instances you have registered.

About WSWB and WSADIE

WebSphere Studio Workbench (WSWB) is an IBM-branded release of the Eclipse platform. IBM delivers WSWB with WebSphere InterChange Server and you can install it along with the core infrastructure. WSWB is capable of running all the plug-ins necessary to develop WebSphere InterChange Server integration components.

WebSphere Studio Application Developer Integration Edition (WSADIE) is an IBM-branded release of the Eclipse platform, like WSWB, but can also be used to develop new plug-ins. WSADIE is not delivered with WebSphere InterChange Server because the ability to create new plug-ins is not required to develop integration components. If you have it installed, however, then you can use it to run the required System Manager and Integrated Test Environment plug-ins. When you install WebSphere InterChange Server you have the option to update an installation of WSADIE to install the necessary plug-ins.

About System Manager

System Manager is the perspective in which you work with the integration components and server instances in a WebSphere InterChange Server business integration system. You use System Manager primarily for the following tasks:

About Integrated Test Environment

Integrated Test Environment is the perspective in which you can test business integration interfaces you have developed. It provides graphical interfaces to emulate connectors, start the required components, and examine business object data. For more information on this perspective, see Using Integrated Test Environment.

About Collaboration Debugger

Collaboration Debugger is a perspective in which you can conveniently troubleshoot collaboration logic. For more information, see Using Collaboration Debugger.

Copyright IBM Corp. 1997, 2004