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:

  • Config blade

  • Adapter blade

  • 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:

  • 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.

  • Configuration for the Adapter (including its DataSource configuration).

  • 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:

Diagram illustrating blade structure: a) Adapter blade for FX Trading, b) Config blade for Liberator 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.