Reference Guide
Table Of Contents
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Establishing Your Test and Development Environments
- 3 Developing Applications
- Introduction
- Authentication
- REST API
- Audit Logging
- Alert Logging
- Configuration
- High Availability
- OpenFlow
- Metrics Framework
- GUI
- SKI Framework - Overview
- SKI Framework - Navigation Tree
- SKI Framework - Hash Navigation
- SKI Framework - View Life-Cycle
- SKI Framework - Live Reference Application
- UI Extension
- Introduction
- Controller Teaming
- Distributed Coordination Service
- Persistence
- Backup and Restore
- Device Driver Framework
- 4 Application Security
- 5 Including Debian Packages with Applications
- 6 Sample Application
- Application Description
- Creating Application Development Workspace
- Application Generator (Automatic Workspace Creation)
- Creating Eclipse Projects
- Updating Project Dependencies
- Building the Application
- Installing the Application
- Application Code
- 7 Testing Applications
- 8 Built-In Applications
- Appendix A
- Appendix B
- Bibliography
6 Sample Application
The following information describes how to create a complete sample application to show how all
the parts fit together, using various parts of the SDN Controller framework.
The SDK provides a tool to generate a skeletal application project structure as a starting template
for custom projects. This tool automates the steps described in the following information. Thus, if
you prefer (and it is recommended) to use the application generator tool to create an application
workspace go directly to Application Generator (Automatic Workspace Creation) on page 144.
Note that the application generated by the tool does not provide an actual device monitoring
implementation, but merely a skeletal project structure.
This example uses something that is complex enough to show the various services and basic API
operations, but not something that gets bogged down with details. It also uses a domain that is
familiar to everyone working with SDN so to concentrate on how to work with the HP VAN SDN
Controller SDK, not on what the application domain is all about.
Application Description
For this example, we use a domain that is easily understood and that everyone can relate to: An
application that monitors reachability status of Open Flow switches. The application provides a
simple view to display the current status of the discovered Open Flow switches and it offers a REST
API to request discovered devices information. This conceptual domain includes the Open Flow
switch which contains information like: IP Address, MAC Address, Friendly Name and Reachability
Status (Online, Offline).
Obviously in the real world there would be many more model objects, relations, considerations
and much more complexity. This example defines something complex enough to be interesting and
touch on the important points, but simple enough to maintain the focus on the HP VAN SDN
Controller.
You can get the complete sample application source code from the HP VAN SDN Controller SDK.
Creating Application Development Workspace
The first step to develop an SDN application is creating the application development workspace.
The workspace is the set of source projects and configuration files that is compiled, packaged and
deployed to the SDN controller.
For the sample application the information from Table 4 is used. In order to create a workspace
for a different application it would be necessary to update all appearances of the information
shown in Table 4.
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