As the number of data into a database or spreadsheet grows up, it is getting more complex to display all that info in a simple way that can have meaning to the user, in only one screen. This is the business use case that this tool try to resolve. For that purpose, WSO2 Dashboard Server (WSO2 DS) provides a platform that enables users to create dashboards to display data. It is a gadget container.
Features
- To create engaging user experiences.
- Visual tool for business users to compose their dashboards.
- Allows to centrally manage the different sets of dashboards.
- Enables each user to have their own personalized view of those dashboards based on their user preferences.
- Every dashboard configuration is stored in a JSON file.
- Developers can work with Jaggery APIs to manage data.
- A dashboard has a default layout with a distribution. The user can create his own layout and distribution.
- The information can be displayed on different pages with related authorization.
- Dashboards can be used in a mobile.
- The tool is flexible enough to customize theming, layout, interfaces, artifacts creation, multi tenant and horizontally scale.
- The access to a dashboard is role-based secure.
- Communication between gadgets, using publish subscribe pattern.
- Single sign-on (SSO), Users need only a single username/password pair to access multiple services.
General scheme
The data is stored on different devices. They are used to feed gadgets and diagrams. They are located in a Dashboard with a specific layout. And finally they are ready to be displayed, using different channels, like in a document, website, etc.
Architecture
Portal application:
It is a web application. To create dashboards via the Dashboard Designer. To view dashboards via the Dashboard view mode.
Dashboard Designer:
To customize dashboard layouts, add pages to a dashboard, configure inter-gadget communication based on the Pub/Sub mechanism, add dashboard banners, etc.
WSO2 Carbon Server:
It is core of WSO2 Dashboard Server and it is based on the WSO2 Carbon Kernel. All the features provided by the Kernel are available in WSO2 DS.
APIs and Pages:
Tenant router, API router, Page router. The tenant router -> filters all the incoming requests to the Dashboard Designer, by analyzes the request URL context, and redirects those requests to either the API or page router, they are routers in WSO2 DS used to differentiate the incoming API and page requests. To manage API’s you can make use of the WSO2 API Manager, also part of the WSO2 open source integration platform.
Controllers:
Separate controllers for the API and page requests.
Modules:
To handle the registry transactions and to perform business logic related to user requests.
Store:
It contains the dashboard layouts and gadgets, used to create dashboards.
Theme:
it contains two directories: image and templates. The image directory contains the images that are used in the web pages and the templates directory contains web views.
Jaggery:
The Jaggery compiler and features. http://jaggeryjs.org/
Shindig:
Server used to render gadgets based on the OpenSocial specification.
Install the tool
Go to http://wso2.com/products/dashboard-server/ and install the latest version.
After installing the tool we can use two urls:
- Mgt Console URL : https://localhost:9443/carbon/
- Dashboard Designer : https://localhost:9443/portal
This is the introductory part of a set of articles related to the WSO2 Dashboard Server. In the next chapters, we’re going to explore this useful tool more in depth, with a set of step by step examples. Read here Introduction to WSO2 Dashboard Server (WSO2 DS) – Part 2.
If you would like to read information about other WSO2 products like the WSO2 API Manager, WSO2 Identity Server or WSO2 Enterprise Service Bus, feel free to have a look here.
