Typical setup

Components

The Publisher consists of the following components:

1. The Publisher Application application, used to publish applications from one environment to another.
2. The Publisher Client component, used to execute published applications on an environment.
3. The Publisher API, which has the same capabilities as the Publisher application. This API can be used to integrate the publishing process with other tools.

The following picture provides a graphical representation of the different components and their interaction. In this picture the Publisher can be replaced by another tool that uses the Publisher API. Also note that an application from Studio can be executed directly on the Runtime (in case of a Development environment), or needs the Publisher and the Publisher Client to be executed on the Runtime (in case of a Test/Acceptance/Production environment).

Usage

The publication of applications from one environment to another can be controlled by restricting publishing actions to certain users. Furthermore, the Publisher can be configured to use the two man rule, which enforces that a publish action by a user always needs to be approved by another user.

When an application is published from Studio, an export is made from the Studio repository and stored in the Publisher database of the environment that is published to, for instance the Test environment. When this application is published from Test to Acceptation, than an copy is made from the application stored in the Publisher database of the Test environment and stored in the Publisher database of the Acceptation environment. Note that the application resides on each environment that it is published to. To remove the application from an environment, the application needs to be unpublished. This action removes the application from an environment by cleaning the corresponding database entry. This does not apply to the Studio (Development) environment, as the application will always reside in the Studio repository.