Optical-Networks Configurator

A demo example for openCPQ.

The hypothetical company OptoKom SE sells switches for optical networks.

Configuration Rules

For the demo configurator, assume the following:

• There are three products, OptoSwitch 4, OptoSwitch 6, and OptoSwitch 16.
• OptoSwitch 4 provides 4 slots, which can be equipped with boards. Similarly, OptoSwitch 6 and OptoSwitch 16 provide 6 and 16 slots, respectively.
• There are single-width boards and double-width boards (which occupy two adjacent slots).
• A double-width board can only be inserted into slots with odd numbers in OptoSwitch 6 or OptoSwitch 16. Double-width boards cannot be used in OptoSwitch 4.
• Boards can have electrical interfaces or a number of ports of certain types which can be equipped with transceivers of the same type.
• A module-carrier board can be equipped with modules, which in turn have electrical interfaces or can be equipped with transceivers.
• The optical switches can be mounted into racks. The height units used by the optical switches have to be respected.
• Racks contain additional fan trays which depend on the heat dissipation of the contained devices.
• Racks can contain an uninteruptible power supply (UPS). The dimensioning of the UPS depends on the used power.

Configuration Modes

Different configuration modes are supported:

• Configuration of single products (OptoSwitch 4/6/16).
• Configuration of a solution consisting of racks equipped with switches, a network-management system, and additional services. To make the configuration more comfortable, some parameters can be given at the top level.

Maintenance of the Configurator

The product models are maintained by three different roles:

• The openCPQ modeling expert models the structure of the configurator and the structure of each product. JavaScript and openCPQ knowledge is required, as well as some understanding of the configuration process and the products. This part of the configurator changes only when new products are introduced or products are changed heavily.
• The product manager maintains nearly-tabular data for the components (boards, modules, and transceivers). This nearly-tabular data is represented in JSON format (in file resources/components.json). This part of the configurator might change every month. It might be imported from a PDM system.
• The basic-data manager maintains materials with descriptions and prices in tabular form (as tab-separated values in file resources/materials.tsv). This data can change daily and should be loaded at each start of the configurator. It might be imported from an ERP system.

An Embedding Application

Directory embedding-demo contains a simple application demonstrating how configurators can be embedded into business applications.

Running the Configurator in the Web

Demo configurators are available for OptoSwitch 4, OptoSwitch 6, OptoSwitch 16, and for a complete solution.

There is also a demo for the embedding of configurators in a business application.

Building and Serving the Configurator

The commands below require that you have the programs git, node and npm (also coming with node) installed and in your "PATH".

Run the following commands to build and serve the configurator:

$ git clone https://github.com/webXcerpt/openCPQ-example-optical-transport.git
$ cd openCPQ-example-optical-transport
$ npm install

Development Mode

You can start a development server with

$ npm run dev-server

Now point your browser to one of

• http://localhost:8080/webpack-dev-server/index.html?OS4,
• http://localhost:8080/webpack-dev-server/index.html?OS6,
• http://localhost:8080/webpack-dev-server/index.html?OS16,
• http://localhost:8080/webpack-dev-server/index.html?solution

for a configurator or to

• http://localhost:8080/webpack-dev-server/embedding-demo/embedding-demo.html

for the embedding demo.

The development server will observe your changes to the code, rebuilding the application as needed and reloading it in your browser. This is quite comfortable for configurator development. You can stop the development server with Control-C.

Production Mode

To build the application in directory ./dst/ in "production mode", run

$ npm run build

(still from within openCPQ-example-optical-transport).

To deploy that build via FTP to your HTTP server you can run

$ npm run deploy

This requires that you have a file deployment.json of the form

{
  "host": "...",
  "user": "...",
  "password": "...",
  "folder": "..."
}

providing the FTP location and credentials for the deployment.