The previous blog described why software vendors build out their off-the-shelf products with arrangements for functional extensibility. Also I reviewed what motivates companies designing and manufacturing transportation electrical interconnect to expect, ask for and then subsequently use an Application Programming Interface (API). Now, drawn from my experience of Capital’s deployment at customer sites around the world, you can read about some reasons why taking advantage of Capital’s extensibility is a constant and how that worth is appreciated by users. It is worth reading because the benefits can be substantial to your company.
Essential for joined-up processes
Software applications which accomplish tasks as if they were independent of a need to interact across environments or domains do a disservice to the companies which in a true enterprise environment require interoperability. Enterprise applications have to interface with one another in order to be successful within a modern business. Data needs to be shared between multiple applications so that it can be tracked and traced throughout a product’s development lifecycle. These applications also need to be extended to ensure they meet the particular customer requirements. Flexibility includes the capability to model and store the business rules and what is referred to as the Intellectual Property (or IP for short) use in the design methodologies. Here is often some of the core private foundations of the competitive edge you have over rivals.
Applications talk to each other through data transfers in and out. Processes for import and export are handled in a part of the system called Capital Bridges. Services for data take-on for designs, services for library import, merging and blending are presented in user interfaces based on the extensibility technologies of Capital. When you expose the data model so it becomes interdependent for information to what is happening in other systems you get in return plenty of benefits.
Enabling transfer in and out of data without the formalized arrangements and structural support of Capital Bridges’ licensed products like those to Catia and Creo and NX Mechanical Cad systems are based on extensibility principles. Sharing of data is one set of benefits – using events and data conditions to trigger actions back and forth between systems is another advance which users are increasingly coming to expect. In Capital this is achieved with the Web Services links. Furthermore, special data conditions – based for instance on the way you have chosen to customize your mechanical CAD models with property tags – can be the subject of specially written bridge processor extensions done in-house or by bought-in talent like that provided by Mentor Graphics Consulting division.
Mentor Graphics Consulting experts do not get any more access through the API or extensibility provisions than your in-house staff do, it just so happens that they are likely to be more experienced, having worked on several similar projects before yours. Your own people will perhaps be partnering with consultants to learn from their experience to make the best time to productivity.
Why do you choose to use the API?
Every organization has special requirements, and I am sure yours is no different. One maxim I use with customers who are adopting Capital is: “it is not a matter of whether you want to extend Capital or not to meet your specific needs, the question is, how far do you want to go and how often?”
Typically, adapting the extensibility features to their individual needs is one of the more innovative experiences of deploying Capital for customers. Plans for extensibility and making plugins stay fluid as customers get into new ways to deliver innovation, in the same way the business of design and progression to manufacturing is done. It is also normal for this innovating phase of picking up use of the API functionality to take place after the first wave of deployment projects’ data populates the databases. One of the exciting yields for stakeholders at this time of using plugin reporting and validation is to explore new ways to understand your business, as you explore new analyses of your data, which arise, from your business activity.
Customization vs. Extensibility
For some companies the word ‘customization’ is taboo. The combination of enterprise software and a history of customizations entail past experiences they do not wish to repeat. Production deployed software may be perhaps 10 years old or more and has not been kept up to date because of the level of customization. Defunct hardware and unsupported operating environments represent a business risk. Capital does not carry these risks with it.
The notion of extensibility is different. The Capital API is designed detached from the core software. Extensions can be created freely without fear of interfering with any of the core tool functionality. This means that future upgrades to the software can occur independently of any plug-in development. Upgrades do not carry a threat of service interruption or denial.
Application Programming Interfaces are a way of producing functional additions run inside the larger commercial off-the-shelf application. The best examples of API’s therefore retain all the validation and control (like security layers etc.), whilst still allowing customer innovation. Don’t be fooled into thinking this is an abstruse subject. It is intensely practical. Real problems are solved and there is a happy situation of multiplication of benefits when this becomes a mechanism for innovation. If your API sidesteps, circumvents, ignores, or sneaks around your quality and security processes for example – that can force on you tough lessons learned about allowing access to sensitive data. Capital will not do that.
Two examples of how the API is useful.
Here is an example. A manufacturing plant will only accept the harness BOM when it matches a certain format and includes some additional attributes. Off the shelf Capital provides ways to modify, or alter, a table or report. More often than not there is not enough flexibility to provide you with the exact format required. However let’s speculate that there is a special set of conditons for the BOM format which cannot be met. With very little effort, a Java programmer could create a custom version of the BOM that can either be printed on the diagram, or created as a static report. That plugin can be added to the set already provided in Capital HarnessXC. Not only is a difficult case quickly closed, the table can be automatically added to the face of every harness that goes to that factory thanks to Capital’s styling technology.
Here is another example. You have a requirements that no multiple terminations can be present on a sealed connector, or disallow placement of connectors of a certain sub-type in hazardous or harsh environment areas of the vehicle. Let’s assume too it is unlikely that any commercial tool has a validation “out of the box” to detect these situations – Capital Logic has around 70 out of the box but let’s go with the assumption. It will be the work of just perhaps an hour or so, for a java programmer to author and apply this check as a custom Design Rule Check in addition to the set already provided in Capital Logic. A tricky localized use case is swiftly deal with – and you can also determine that a design cannot be saved or released if there are cases of wiring that breaks these rules.
The above picture is from my Capital system, and I’m at the moment using just over 50 API utility extensions.
What do you invest in to use the API?
I have asserted – a programmer familiar with java (not an expert programmer) will take “perhaps an hour or so” – and if this person is hired on as a staffer in your company, or hired from outside as a consultant or contractor that attracts an hourly rate. My observation is that usually a good slab of API programming time will be spent on creating new DRC’s. Checking experience with other colleagues, their observations are that making special reports is often the priority that customers work to. And of course the user time specifying and refining the requirements, acceptance testing the code is time you may account for in your tracking system as not actually interacting with customers. These investments in future productivity are well worth it. The value in removing errors and thus eliminating quality problems, automate reviews, supplement documentation
Usually it is a good idea also to have someone write up the usage methods for the plug-in code, which is used in your system. This investment in process definition with your software tool also ensures you minimize training overhead.
In-house or external resources can create and re-purpose code quickly for you
Time is money. Talk is cheap. Talk takes time. So either talk is not cheap or time is not money.
Also reducing the time to productivity is the copious reference documentation resources which are installed with Capital. Other API’s can sometimes provide a toolkit without anything other than the barest of instruction. Capital is different.
You have a plethora of printable, readable material on all aspects of the subject. Supplemental resources on the IESD community site come from Mentor Programming and Product management people, to which any customer with a current maintenance contract may contribute. If you are the person actually doing the programming, as a “last last” resort after looking at the manuals and perusing the examples and advice from the practitioner friends out there in the community, phew …. well there might be your worst programmer fears coming true and you actually have to speak to someone on the phone or have a web meeting and talk. Hear some nice polite and generous guidance from a fellow human being.
Your people using the Capital API are valuable to you, so Mentor equips them with the best.
Your own IT experts historically have been solving practical business problems with IT tools and solutions. Perhaps as they have crafted integrations, extensions they have been used to languages and environments which are more suited to Microsoft Office documentation solutions perhaps rather than enterprise data-store-scalable professional tools. The Capital API being tightly coupled into the corporate design environment and locked in to IT governance policies which minimize your exposure to business risk is also an aspect of the unexpected benefits you get for choosing this way of working.
It is a safer, faster, cheaper method of extending and personalizing your Capital repertoire. Professional services costs are under control – the know-how of your business is kept firmly in-house. Empowering your talent pool with enterprise class tools and allowing them to trade up from the basic scripting/macro building technologies of brute data manipulation in office automation products is good. Very good for career development and for giving your valuable IT employees who you want to retain an interesting job to do now – and learning platform-agnostic Java if they do not already know it – which will usually have an impact for other domains than Capital too.
Activation by license.
The operation of the API is governed by a licensed product called Capital Integration Server (CIS). All additional coded plugins depend on the presence of this license for a user to have the chance to load and run them.
Design Rule Checks, Design Inspectors, custom actions, custom-designed tables which appear styled into the diagrams etc. have a running CIS process as a prerequisite. Likewise any pluggable authentication programs or web-service based sub-processes consumed or hosted, like those involved in event publication and subscription triggering. Thus does this purchased CIS license underpin integrations between Capital and other systems – enabling for many customers a tremendous amount of automation and validation, yielding a continuous return in efficiencies and elevated product quality, decreased engineering time.
These are the things you can write in the API which will help Capital users every day they work in the software.
Used by people with time pressures.
Extended functionality achieved by using the Capital API is, well, not just an extension but an addition to the value you get from Capital as a user. If someone has given you a custom DRC it means that you are confirming, without manually checking through a data source, quicker and more accurately the state of your data, and therefore building quality in to your product. Data can also be augmented using the API – again a faster and less error prone process than using manual means. Data can be transferred or pulled automatically – for example to a Product Lifecycle Management system (PLM) – saving staff time and effort and ensuring compliance with corporate governance directives. Less time doing things which don’t directly contribute to the electrical system design, less time “minding and ministering to the machine”
If you are a Capital user this means you get more time to do the job you are paid to do and are good at and enjoy doing. More of what you like to do. Fewer things you have to do which aren’t what you like to do. The more time you spend creating data, and the less time you spend validating it, the more productive you will be and the business as a whole will see the benefit.