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What CGI Studio Editions are existing?

There two major editions of CGI Studio:

  1. Enterprise Edition - the version which provides maximum flexibility for embedded projects (the only version up to 3.14)
  2. Professional Edition - the version which provides ease of use for creating embedded projects

The main difference is how the data binding is down in the two versions. The Enterprise Edition provides maximum flexibility, however requires some engineering knowledge, as the CGI Studio Player needs to be build specifically for the target platform. This overhead allow to fully customize and optimize the HMI application for the target.

The Professional Edition aims to reduce the engineering knowledge to a minimum, so compiling of the player is required and the HMI development is focused on designing the HMI. The data binding is, in contrast to the Enterprise Edition, possible in a Python-Script instead of C++ and is already predefined, which further reduces the engineering efforts. The creation of HMI is so faster and requires less engineering knowledge, however reduces its flexibility of target optimization capabilities a little bit. To overcome this limitations, Candera is preparing optimized Player builds for the supported platforms of the Professional Edition. 

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The Professional Edition replaced the definition, compiling and data binding implementation in C++ with a fixed set of data bindings and a Python based script for the data binding implementation. 

Professional Edition Advantages and Disadvantages

The simplification for the development and the skipping of the compiling of the data bindings, comes with some advantages and disadvantages.

  • Advantages
    • Simplified development process
    • Less specific embedded knowledge is required for Professional Edition projects
    • Faster development
    • Aims for less complex HMI projects
    • Simple Python scripting interface instead of C++ implementation
    • No need for compiling the player
  • Disadvantages
    • fixed set of data binding items, but will be sufficient for most projects (is planned in future version to be flexible)
    • Custom player builds are not possible or on demand via Candera support

Enterprise Edition Advantages

The Enterprise Edition allows highly optimized adoptions of the CGI Studio Player, as it can be built during the development process. Also, the data binding, as it can be individually optimized, allows further optimizations. This engineering overhead pays off, especially in projects with high volumes to optimize production costs and for experiences engineering departments. Moreover, if you are using lower-end platform, the additional flexibility allows further performance and memory optimizations.

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