The Topology Overview displays the associations between Environments and Target Groups. The colored dots indicate that the Target Group has been associated to the Environment, creating a Target.

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Each intersection is created by associating Target Groups to Environments on the Edit/Create Environment Wizard, or the Edit/Create Target Group Wizard.

Many Target Groups will have a development environment, a production environment, and at least one testing environment. Endpoint association and properties are defined at each intersection by clicking on the colored dots.

Target Groups are flexible enough to allow FlexDeploy to adapt to a variety of technologies and platforms. In Oracle Data Integrator, for example, a Target Group is most likely one to one with a single installation, spanning all Environments (e.g. DEV, SIT, UAT, and PROD). However, for WebLogic Server a Target Group is created for each WebLogic domain, since each domain requires a different property configuration to communicate with its servers.

Notice that in the table below the wls_customer and wls_order Target Groups (domains) share the same host/Endpoint in the DEV and SIT Environments, but only share some of the same hosts/Endpoint in the UAT and PROD Environments. Mapping the Instances to the WLS domains allows the flexibility to match the Endpoint and properties to your exact Topology.

Viewing Targets

To view the Environment Instances that have been established select Topology from the menu, and choose the Topology Overview tab.

Every colored dot on the screen represents a Target, a physical installation of some application, middleware, database or subset of it. The configuration of these pairings can be viewed and edited by clicking the circle.

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Updating Target Properties

Each target has a Properties tab which shows all the properties that are associated to it. The circle on the Topology Overview will become green if all of the required properties are set and an endpoint is assigned.

The properties are linked to the target because workflows and/or plugin operations associated to the Target Group have sarget-scoped properties defined. These Target properties must have values defined for every Environment to which that Target Group is mapped. This provides, for example, the ability to define unique Weblogic Admin Server host and port for each Target.

See the Properties chapter for more details.

Associating Endpoints to a Target

The different colors of the circles indicate the level of completion of the configuration, see the table below for what each color indicates.

Each intersection has an Endpoints tab, which displays the different Endpoints that are associated to the target. 

To associate an Endpoint to a Target, click and drag one or more Endpoints from the right over to the main pane. The list of available Endpoints on the right can be filtered by entering all or part of the name or port into the Search field and the list will be automatically filtered. By default, only Endpoints which are active are available for association.

Once an Endpoint has been shuttled into the Selected Endpoints pane, optional Resource Types can be assigned. The Resource Types indicates what type of resources the Endpoint contains, which helps in determining which Endpoints should be selected to perform particular plugin executions. For example, the WebLogic plugin has Resource Types of WLS Admin Server, WLS Managed Server, and WLS Node Manager. Selecting the Resource Type(s) for each Endpoint tells FlexDeploy a little bit more about the Topology and enables it to direct work appropriately (e.g. to the WebLogic Admin Server vs. one of its Managed Servers).

To disassociate an Endpoint from the Target, click an Endpoint row and drag it back to the list on the right.

Click the Save button to save the changes and automatically return to the previous screen. Alternatively, click the Apply button to save any changes, but remain on the screen until the Back button is clicked.