What is Glue42 Desktop?
Architecture
Architectural Diagram
How It All Works
The main components of Glue42 Desktop are the Glue42 Core and the Glue42 Gateway. These two components can be packed together or deployed independently (see Deployment).
Glue42 Core
The Glue42 Core offers APIs for:
- Loading the list of application configurations for the current user;
- Managing the applications life-cycle (starting/stopping apps);
- Hosting web apps in desktop windows;
- Sticking windows together;
- Advanced window management - Swimlane UI
- Saving and restoring layouts - Layouts
Data Sharing Between Apps
- Synchronizing cross-application data by publishing and subscribing for updates of data objects - Shared Contexts
- UI based on Shared Contexts - Channels
- Registering and invoking methods - Interop
The Glue42 Core APIs are available in JavaScript/TypeScript for web applications and in .NET, Java, and COM/VBA for desktop applications.
The Glue42 Core is highly customizable and many of its features can be enabled, disabled or re-configured.
Glue42 Gateway
The Glue42 Gateway is a transport with domain specific protocols. It enables the communication between applications running in Glue42 Desktop. By default, it uses WebSockets for delivering messages to applications. Other options are also available upon request.
Application Stores
Glue42 Desktop loads the list of applications available to the user from a pre-configured set of application stores. They can be of different type:
- Local stores - definitions are read from folders on the machine that is running Glue42 Desktop;
- Remote stores - definitions are fetched from a REST service;
To add an application to Glue42 Desktop, you need to add it to an application store.
Connectors
Glue42 Desktop comes with a set of Connectors for integrating 3rd party applications (MS Office, Bloomberg, Salesforce, etc.) with Glue42 enabled applications. The Connectors expose functionalities provided by a specific 3rd party application, so that they can be re-used in Glue42 enabled apps.The Glue42 Excel Connector, for instance, allows applications to open an Excel sheet, populate it with data from the application and receive updates when the data in Excel is changed.
Additional Services
Notifications
The Glue42 Notification Service (GNS) handles notifications from GNS servers and delivers them to the end-user via a notifications UI.
Search service
The Glue42 Search Service (GSS) performs global searches on all defined GSS providers and returns consolidated results to the user.
Metrics
Extensive Metrics for tracking the user journey can be collected from all Glue42 enabled apps and published to a data center.