Service Builder

Service Builder is the development tool for data access services, a SQL-only solution to relational data access.

With data access service, you have:

• The simplicity of building your entire data access layer with only SQL and JSON, completely circumventing the object-relational impedance mismatch problem.

• The flexibility of designing your object model any way you need, as opposed to relational-like objects due to ORM limitations. Data access service enables you to query objects of any shapes from relational database, just like from document database.

• A uniform data access layer that works with all applications: Java, C#, Python, Node, and others, as data access service provide data access as a backing service to the application.

For more information about data access services, visit data access service concepts.

Get Started

Follow the getting-started tutorials for Service Builder and data access service:

Getting Started with Service Builder
Getting Started with Data Access Service

Features

• Application Explorer

  • Connect to remote workspace hosted on Development Server.
  • Create application and module.
  • Create and test query, SQL command and repository services.
  • Deploy application, module and service to remote workspace.

• Data Source Explorer

  • Create and deploy data source to remote workspace.

• Deployment Explorer

  • Inspect data sources and applications deployed in remote workspace.
  • Test services deployed in remote workspace.

Development Server

Service Builder must connect to a Development Server to work. The Development Server provides backend services to the Service Builder and hosts development workspaces for users. Data access services can be deployed into a workspace on the Development Server using Service Builder, and accessed through the service endpoint of the workspace by a client application in development for data access needs, as shown below:

The Development Server is published in the AWS ECR Public Gallery under backlogic. It is meant to be launched as a data access development platform in the cloud using a container service like AWS Fargate, so that different data access, as well client application, developers can work and coordinate on the same Development Server. However, the Development Server can also be launched on the local machine for local development, as illustrated in the Getting Started with Development Server tutorial.

Usage

Follow the Getting Started with Service Builder tutorial:

• Connect to Development Server with Application Explorer bar.
• Create and deploy data source with Data Source Explorer.
• Create, test and deploy application, module and services with Application Explorer.
• Inspect and test application and services deployed into remote workspace with Deployment Explorer.

Install

Click Extensions on Activity Bar and search for service builder extension pack.

Required VSCode Extensions

The following VS Code extensions are required by some parts of Service Builder and are included with Service Builder Extension Pack.

• REST Client
  A great HTTP client tool. Required for testing data access service from Deployment Explorer.

• JSON Grid Viewer
  A great tool for viewing JSON array as table. Required to view data bindings as JSON file and JSON grid side by side.

Recommended VSCode Extensions

Data access service development is mainly SQL development. The following VS Code extension is recommended for creating a SQL environment within VS Code.

• Database Client

  An excellent database tool for MySQL, PostgreSQL and others.

Feedback and Support

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