A Carbon Application, abbreviated as a cApp, is a collection of artifacts deployable on a Carbon instance. These artifacts are usually java-based or xml configurations, designed differently for each product in the Carbon platform. Users have to deploy these artifacts to generate services. In a single Carbon-based solution, there can be numerous artifacts used, such as Axis2 services, data services, synapse configurations, endpoints, proxy services, mediators, registry resources, BEPL BPEL workflows etc. Usually, these artifacts are created in a development environment and then moved one by one into staging/production environments. When moving a Carbon solution from one setup to another, the user has to manually configure these artifacts to build up the entire solution. This is a time-consuming process.
Alternatively, bundling configuration files and artifacts in a cApp makes it easy for users to port their Web service based solutions across environments. Carbon Applications save time by providing the facility to export your entire solution as a single cApp artifact and simply deploy it in the server. WSO2 Web services development tooling environment (Carbon Studio) Developer Studio can be used to develop your individual artifacts and export them as a single cApp artifact. You can then deploy it on any Carbon server which has cApp deployment capabilities.
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