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What is the CAST Dashboard Package?
The CAST Dashboard Package is a "global" name for the following CAST dashboards, packaged as WAR files:
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| Note that starting from release 1.8.0, the CAST Security Dashboard related WAR files are no longer provided. These are now provided separately in CAST Extend. |
Why standalone WAR files?
Releasing dashboard WAR files outside of the CAST AIP release cycle allows CAST to respond more quickly to feature requests and bug fixes which would ordinarily need to wait until a CAST AIP maintenance release or a new minor/major release.
What is released in a standalone WAR file?
Each WAR file released with the package is based on a specific release of CAST AIP, then feature requests and bug fixes are added. All changes that are integrated into the standalone WARs do not require any update to the CAST AIP schemas, therefore deployment is relatively simple - deploy the new WARs alongside the existing WAR, update any configuration files in the new deployment for your own environment and then remove the existing corresponding WAR - see Installation and deployment process.
Release Notes
Please see CAST Dashboards - Release Notes for more information about each release:
- New features added
- Bug fixes
Installation and deployment process
Please see Installation and deployment process for more information about:
- How to obtain the CAST Dashboard Package
- Installation prerequisites
- Installation process
End-user guides
Please see the following guides for more information about how to use the CAST Dashboards:
Advanced configuration options
Please see the following:
Children Display
- AIP Console
- AIP Core for Dashboards + AIP Node
- CAST Storage Service / PostgreSQL
- CAST Dashboards (Health and Engineering)
At a broad level, the workflow below shows the onboarding of application source code to CAST AIP through AIP Console. CAST AIP generates application source code metadata by reverse-engineering front-end, middleware, and back-end code. The application data that is generated by CAST AIP can be viewed using the Health Dashboard (provides insight for digital leaders), the Engineering Dashboard (provides detailed results for delivery teams and engineers) or the Security Dashboard (provides similar functionality to the Engineering Dashboard, focused on Security measures and rules).
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AIPCONSOLE
CAST AIP is piloted via the AIP Console - a front end web application that can be installed on Microsoft Windows or Linux and provides services that are required to configure and run AIP analyses remotely on multiple analysis machines. It supports the full AIP analysis process from registering the application, delivering the source code to producing the snapshots and viewing the dashboards. AIP Console is designed such that it allows you to:
- Manage multiple "nodes" (i.e. AIP Core analysis engines) to spread the analysis load
- Create Applications
- Deliver source code for analysis
- Configure analyses
- Run analyses/snapshots
- Check logs
- Manage technology extensions
- Manage transactions
- Manage architecture models
- Direct access to CAST Dashboards to check analysis/snapshot results
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AIP Node
- AIPCORE is the analysis "engine" - a software package installed on Microsoft Windows. It can be installed on one or multiple Windows servers (or "AIP Nodes") and is fully managed by the AIP Console front end web application. This is known as the "CAST AIP setup" in "legacy" terms.
- AIP Node back-end - a software package that provides the communication between the AIP Core analysis engine and the AIP Console front end web application. The AIP Node package must be installed alongside the AIP Core analysis engine, on each server (AIP node) managed by the AIP Console.
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CAST Storage Service / PostgreSQL
Data produced by the AIP Core analysis engine needs to be stored somewhere before it can be "consumed". This requirement is fulfilled by the open-source RDBMS PostgreSQL which CAST AIP is optimized to work with. PostgreSQL has been chosen largely due to its low cost (i.e. free) and fast performance. CAST provides PostgreSQL as a custom Windows installable package known as CAST Storage Service, or it can be installed on all mainstream Linux distributions via the repository system. CAST highly recommends the use of PostgreSQL on a Linux instance as this consistently gives the best performance during analyses.
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CAST Dashboards - result consumption
Results produced by the AIP Core analysis engine are consumed/exploited for the most part via browser based "dashboards". These are delivered:
- as an embedded package of the AIP Console (allowing direct access from the Console)
- as a separate standalone package (can be deployed on Apache Tomcat, or in standalone mode without Apache Tomcat)
Health Dashboard
- Designed to provide an "at-a-glance" summary of your software health in terms of robustness, security, efficiency, changeability, transferability and quality.
- Accurate sizing metrics
- Heatmap to quickly find the highest risk
- Trending analysis to benchmark performance over time
- Fast facts on the evolution of your software
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Engineering Dashboard
- Detailed information about multi-component software flaws
Ability to validate against industry standard rules
Drill-down to identify specific code location of critical flaws
Architectural flaws inside the riskiest objects and transactions
Action plans based on optimized list of high impact issues
Insight into why specific defects are occurring and guidelines for fast remediation
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Security Dashboard
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Report Generator
Report Generator is an installable software package for automatic generation of reports based on data generated by CAST AIP. The solution provides the opportunity (for example) to prepare and automate assessments for each new version of application analyzed with CAST AIP. Documents are based on Microsoft Office templates and can be modified to prepare a specific template to meet a particular use case or to comply with a company format. After generation, the resulting document can be further adapted if necessary.
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Other software
Transaction/Function Point configuration
Available in the AIP Console front-end web application (and also as a software package delivered as part of the AIP Core analysis engine available on each AIP Node): designed to provide calibration functionality for the initial automatic Function Point count produced by the AIP Core analysis engine (using OMG-compliant Automated Function Points). Calibration includes removing technical and temporary objects from the list of Function Points counted, aggregating and splitting several function points into one and changing the type of the Data or Transactional Functions.
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Architecture Studio
Available in the AIP Console front-end web application (and also as a software package delivered as part of the AIP Core analysis engine available on each AIP Node): Architecture Studio provides the ability to create custom architecture and quality rule models for a given application. Models are validated during source code analyses and results are produced in the form of violations of the model.
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