AppSail

Introduction

Overview

Catalyst AppSail is a fully-managed, independent, Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) component of Catalyst Serverless that enables you to develop and deploy services in the cloud with ease. AppSail provides you with a powerful and highly-scalable platform to build anything from simple web apps to large enterprise applications, without any infrastructure setup or management concerns.

Unlike Catalyst Serverless functions that you code following a Catalyst-specific template based on the function type, AppSail services can be developed independently of any coding structures. That is, you can build a robust and reliable application completely free of any pre-defined standards or norms set by Catalyst, and securely host it onto the AppSail platform. You will still be able to employ any Catalyst component that you require in your AppSail service through its platform-specific SDK, and achieve the best of both worlds.

Platform Support

Catalyst supports the following programming environments that you can build AppSail services in:

• Java
• Node.js
• Python

Instance Management and Stats

Because an AppSail service is an independent entity, Catalyst provides you complete control over its design, composition, and operation, and lets you simply host its deployable build onto its serverless platform. You can access all app services you deploy through their auto-generated custom domains.

When your service is run, Catalyst spawns dynamic server instances for its execution as needed, and scales up or down based on the traffic, ensuring minimal latency. You will be able to view the instances generated for your service from the Catalyst console when it is run, and perform platform management activities, such as manual deletion of service instances, when needed. Catalyst also offers detailed reports, stats, and execution logs of all your AppSail services that were executed, which helps you make informed business decisions. Additionally, you can perform a host of configurations to define memory allocations, environmental variables, and startup commands for your app service through a CLI-specific configuration file or from the console.

Initializing App Services

AppSail services are generally initialized or added, and deployed to the remote console from the Catalyst CLI. You can test your app through a localhost by serving it. An AppSail service’s directory will also include a CLI-specific basic configuration file when you initialize or add your app.

This help document covers the entirety of building and deploying software services onto AppSail, which includes helpful guides for simple applications that you can build in various frameworks of each programming environment, along with sample code, and the steps to associate them with AppSail.