1. Introduction

Writing your application XML code can be quite challenging. Using a good editor with autocomplete capabilities, along with RTI’s XSD Schema can help. It can still be complicated, however, especially as the project gets bigger and involves multiple files.

RTI System Designer is a tool that allows you to graphically design and configure all aspects of a Connext distributed system. Use it to simplify building XML configuration files for your DDS system and better manage the complexity of a large system.

1.1. About System Designer

System Designer is based on the following RTI technologies:

• RTI Connext DDS Core Libraries XML-Based Application Creation, a mechanism to simplify the development of Connext applications

• RTI Routing Service, an out-of-the-box solution used to rapidly scale and integrate real-time systems that are disparate or geographically dispersed

Think of System Designer as a user interface for:

• XML-Based Application Creation, which enables you to specify the following DDS system elements in XML format:

  • The data types used to communicate information within the system

  • The Topics used in the domain, associating each Topic with a data type

  • The DomainParticipants that could potentially be used, giving each a unique name

  • The DataWriters and DataReaders within each DomainParticipant, each associated with its corresponding Topic

  • The Quality of Service (QoS) for all DDS Entities

• Routing Service, which enables you to specify the following Routing Service elements in XML format:

  • The data types that can be used by Routing Service

  • The Quality of Service (QoS) for all DDS Entities used by Routing Service

  • A library of Routing Service plugins

  • The Routing Service configuration

The only application code you need to write will indicate the name of the DomainParticipant to be created. System Designer’s XML-Based Application Creation infrastructure takes care of the rest by creating the DomainParticipant, registering the types and Topics, and populating all the configured Entities. In addition, you can configure an execution of Routing Service.

1.2. How to Read this Documentation

This Getting Started Guide is not a complete manual for System Designer, and it does not cover all the functionality. The tool includes inline help; look for the symbol for more information about the user interface controls.

This guide includes three main sections:

• Using System Designer details how to use the graphical interface to build XML configuration files.

• Tutorials steps through three scenarios to demonstrate how to build a complete XML file for an application.

• Release Notes lists supported platforms, what’s new, what’s fixed, and known issues in the current release.

1.3. Before You Begin

This document assumes you have a basic understanding of RTI Connext application development and concepts, such as DDS Domains, DomainParticipants, Topics, DataWriters, and DataReaders. For an overview of these concepts, see the RTI Connext DDS Getting Started Guide.