Platform Blades
Blades are used throughout Caplin’s solutions. A blade is a re-usable software module that contains the code and resources needed to implement a business or technical feature.
Caplin Platform blades are deployed on the server using the Deployment Framework.
| Note: For blades in BladeRunnerJS, see here. |
Blade types
There are three types of Platform blade:
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Config blade
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Adapter blade
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Service blade
Config blade
This type of blade consists solely of configuration for the Platform’s core components (Liberator and/or Transformer).
Adapter blade
This type of blade connects to, and supplies data to, a Liberator and/or Transformer. It consists of:
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An Integration Adapter (an executable binary file). Integration Adapters can be written in Java using the Caplin Integration Suite, or in C using the C DataSource API.
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Configuration for the Adapter (including its DataSource configuration).
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Configuration for the core components (Liberator and/or Transformer). This configuration enables the Adapter to exchange data with these core components.
Service blade
This type of blade contains a module written in C, Java, or Lua that is to be loaded into one of the core components; for example, a permissioning auth (authorisation) module that’s loaded into Liberator, or Transformer’s Refiner (filtering and sorting) service.
Example blade structures
Here’s an example showing how two Platform blades are structured; an Adapter blade for FX Trading, and a Config blade for JMX Monitoring:
Sometimes the implementation of a particular feature requires more than one blade, but a blade will never provide more than one feature. You can switch a feature on and off by activating and deactivating the blade or blades that provide it. The Caplin Platform Deployment Framework is supplied with several built-in configuration-only blades. The Framework also provides configuration that supports failover of components.