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App Studio is used to develop and manage WebFOCUS applications, as well as to administer Managed Reporting environments. It is normally assumed, but not required, that WebFOCUS is installed, or will be installed, somewhere in your enterprise. In addition, App Studio architecture and functionality are based on the architecture of WebFOCUS.
There are two pieces involved when developing or administering with App Studio.
The graphical and code generation features do not actually process reports and access data. Instead, they connect to a WebFOCUS environment.
Note: For all other editions, you configure App Studio to access a WebFOCUS environment you installed separately. This step is performed from within App Studio.
In a WebFOCUS environment, WebFOCUS connects a web server and/or application server to your data. End users then access WebFOCUS applications through a web browser. Your enterprise may have multiple WebFOCUS environments, each containing the following components:
Apache Tomcat™ is provided along with App Studio and WebFOCUS for Windows, so no separate web or application server is required to get started. Apache Tomcat is a servlet container that App Studio can use as a web server and application server.
Note: Web servers handle traditional web content, like static HTML and GIF files. Application servers generally handle Java and other processes, but many application servers can also handle the traditional web content. If your application server can handle traditional web content, then a web server is not required. The term application server is used to refer to either an application server or servlet container in WebFOCUS documentation. A servlet container generally handles a subset of what an application server can handle.
A scaled-down WebFOCUS Client is installed with App Studio. The functionality available is based on the App Studio edition for which you are licensed. An embedded Derby database is also installed with stand-alone versions of App Studio. It is used for authentication purposes.
WebFOCUS employs a distributed architecture. This means that the WebFOCUS Client and its WebFOCUS Reporting Servers can either be on the same machine and operating system or distributed across multiple machines running different operating systems. You can easily connect an Apache web server running on UNIX to Microsoft SQL Server data on Windows and DB2 data on z/OS.
For more information on WebFOCUS components and configuration options, refer to the installation and configuration documentation for your platform.
Note: To ensure proper communication, WebFOCUS components should be the same release number as each other and App Studio.
The following steps accompany the figure below and describe how WebFOCUS or App Studio processes requests:
App Studio processes requests the same way that WebFOCUS does. App Studio makes calls to a web and/or application server that is configured to accept a WebFOCUS servlet request. The servlet then connects to the WebFOCUS Reporting Server to process the request.
The web and/or application server can be located on the same machine as App Studio or located elsewhere in your enterprise.
You can also use a combination of local and remote processing.
App Studio provides flexibility in how you develop and maintain your WebFOCUS applications and reports. There are several ways to develop with App Studio.
You can test and run your projects either from within App Studio or through a web browser.
There are two types of Project-based development:
Note: Third-party source management client software must be installed on the App Studio machine to use source management tools.
With stand-alone Project-based development, a web and/or application server is required on the machine where you run App Studio.
For more information about App Studio configurations and development environments, see the Getting Started With WebFOCUS App Studio manual.
App Studio and WebFOCUS can be installed on the same machine, provided WebFOCUS is installed first. The App Studio installation program will detect that WebFOCUS is already installed and by default, use the existing WebFOCUS environment and components. App Studio then runs using the existing WebFOCUS Client configuration, application root directories (APPROOT), web and/or application server aliases and context roots (virtual folders), and WebFOCUS Reporting Server. All products can co-exist and use the same WebFOCUS environment through App Studio or a browser.
App Studio can also be configured to have an independent configuration from WebFOCUS.
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