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diff --git a/src/site-docs/adoc/fragments/howto-apex/introduction.adoc b/src/site-docs/adoc/fragments/howto-apex/introduction.adoc new file mode 100644 index 000000000..faa2f4949 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/site-docs/adoc/fragments/howto-apex/introduction.adoc @@ -0,0 +1,51 @@ +// +// ============LICENSE_START======================================================= +// Copyright (C) 2016-2018 Ericsson. All rights reserved. +// ================================================================================ +// This file is licensed under the CREATIVE COMMONS ATTRIBUTION 4.0 INTERNATIONAL LICENSE +// Full license text at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode +// +// SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-4.0 +// ============LICENSE_END========================================================= +// +// @author Sven van der Meer (sven.van.der.meer@ericsson.com) +// + +== Introduction to APEX Engine and Applications +The core of APEX is the APEX Engine, also known as the APEX Policy Engine. +Beside this engine, an APEX system comes with a few applications intended to help with policy authoring, deployment, and execution. + +The engine itself and most applications are started from the command line with command line arguments. +This is called a Command Line Interface (CLI). +Some applications require an installation on a webserver, as for instance the REST Editor. +Those applications can be accessed via a web browser. + +Starting with APEX version 0.5.6, we also provide plugins for Eclipse realizing a policy development environment. +Those plugins support the main APEX policy language. +Other, higher-level, policy languages will be added in future versions along with their Eclipse plugins. +Furthermore, we are planning to provide a backend supporting the Language Server Protocol (LSP). +This backend, run as a server, will allow to join any editor or IDE that is LSP-enabled to benefit from the APEX policy languages. + +Last not least, one can use the available APEX APIs and applications to develop other applications as required. +This includes policy languages (and associated parsers and compilers / interpreters), GUIs to access APEX or to define policies, clients to connect to APEX, etc. +Separate documentation will be available in APEX releases addressing this type of applications. + +For this documentation, we assume an installation of APEX as a full system (i.e. not minimal) of version 0.5.6 or higher. + +== CLI on Unix, Windows, and Cygwin +A note on APEX CLI applications: all applications and the engine itself have been deployed and tested on different operating systems: Red Hat, Ubuntu, Debian, Mac OSX, Windows, Cygwin. +Each operating system comes with its own way of configuring and executing Java. +The main items here are: + +- For UNIX systems (RHL, Ubuntu, Debian, Mac OSX), the provided bash scripts work as expected + with absolute paths (e.g. `/opt/ericsson/apex/apex-{release-version}/examples`), + indirect and linked paths (e.g. `../apex/apex`), + and path substitutions using environment settings (e.g. `$APEX_HOME/bin/`) +- For Windows systems, the provided batch files (`.bat`) work as expected with + with absolute paths (e.g. `C:\apex\apex-{release-version}\examples`), + and path substitutions using environment settings (e.g. `%APEX_HOME%\bin\`) +- For Cygwin system we assume a standard Cygwin installation with standard tools (mainly bash) using a Windows Java installation. + This means that the bash scripts can be used as in UNIX, however any argument pointing to files and directories need to use either a DOS path (e.g. `C:\apex\apex-{release-version}\examples\config\...`) + or the command `cygpath` with a mixed option. + The reason for that is: Cygwin executes Java using UNIX paths but then runs Java as a DOS/WINDOWS process, which requires DOS paths for file access. + |