A Blueprint wraps one or more Models so they can be made available in a Catalogue and be ordered and provisioned. There are two types of Blueprints:

  • Basic
  • Composite

Simple

A simple Blueprint wraps and describes only a single Model. This means that all defined attributes of that Model effectively become the input arguments in form of ModelAttributes for that Blueprint. The simple blueprint comes as part of the Appclusive installation. Whenever a product designer creates a Model that can be provisioned as a single entity, the designer can associate the Blueprint with the simple blueprint and Appclusive takes care of the complete provisioning process (including approval).

Composite

A composite Blueprint wraps an arbitrary number of Models and/or other Blueprints into a single Blueprint. Therefore a Composite Blueprint can have a combination of input parameters that may be mapped to any Model attributes in any form that are required by the Models.

In addition the Blueprint designer may modify and map Blueprint input parameters in any way that she seems fit for that purpose. It is also possible to let a Blueprint define an input parameter that is used as a basis for other Model attributes, eg:

define input parameter 'com.example.Blueprint1.Size' := { S, M, L }

... can be mapped by the Blueprint to:

switch 'com.example.Appclusive.Product1.Size'
{
  case 'S':
    assign attribute 'com.example.VirtualMachine.CpuCount' = 1
    assign attribute 'com.example.VirtualMachine.MemoryGb' = 2
  case 'M':
    assign attribute 'com.example.VirtualMachine.CpuCount' = 2
    assign attribute 'com.example.VirtualMachine.MemoryG'b = 4
  case 'L':
    assign attribute 'com.example.VirtualMachine.CpuCount' = 4
    assign attribute 'com.example.VirtualMachine.MemoryGb' = 16
}

... where the attribute com.example.VirtualMachine.CpuCount and com.example.VirtualMachine.MemoryGb are specific attributes of a Model called com.example.V001.VirtualMachine which the Blueprint whishes to make available for order.

The following image shows an example of a composite blueprint where several shapes are provisioned as part of a larger Blueprint:

This Blueprint would be provided by the designer of the respectives Models. The designer of the Blueprint is free to add an initial Approval step and handle the Approval once for all related entities. Each invocation of a simple blueprint will also trigger an Approval step in case the respective approval attributes are still present in the configuration.

For more technical information about Blueprints see the information about the Blueprint Engine.