What this book covers
Chapter 1, Blockchain – An Enterprise and Industry Perspective
You've heard about blockchain and you are wondering, What is all the fuss about? In this chapter, we explore why blockchain is a game changer, what innovation it brings, and what the technology landscape looks like.
Chapter 2, Exploring Hyperledger Fabric
With an understanding of the blockchain landscape, we turn our attention to Hyperledger Fabric. The aim of this chapter is to walk you through the deployment of each component of Hyperledger Fabric while unveiling/building the architecture.
Chapter 3, Business Networks
This chapter introduces the notion of a business network. By understanding how a business network is structured in terms of participants, assets, transactions, and events, we're able to create a framework for analysing how real-world problems and opportunities can be addressed with blockchain technology. This chapter is helpful for technical architects, software developers, and business analysts.
Chapter 4, Setting the Stage with a Business Scenario
This chapter describes a business use case and then focuses on understanding the process of creating a good business network using blockchain, from requirements to design and launch, with instructions to set up prerequisite software and a development environment.
Chapter 5, Designing Smart Contract Transactions and Ledger Data Structure
This chapter talks about how to implement the business logic of the smart contracts of the scenario presented in Chapter 4, Setting the Stage with a Business Scenario, and explores the key concepts and libraries necessary for developing a fully functional contract.
Chapter 6, Developing Smart Contracts
This chapter introduces the concept of a multi-part transaction; what it is, why it's important, how it's stored in a blockchain ledger, and how it's generated by a smart contract. Starting with first principles, using fully worked examples, you'll understand how blockchain transactions, ledgers, and smart contracts form the core of a blockchain solution. This chapter is a must-read for technical architects and software developers.
Chapter 7, Developing Applications
This chapter examines and describes how applications can exploit the smart contracts deployed with a Hyperledger Fabric network. Using a broad range of worked examples, we'll see how applications use the three fundamental operations of ledger query, transaction submission, and ledger notification to perform shared transaction processing to improve multi-organization business processing. This chapter is a must-read for technical architects and software developers.
Chapter 8, Advanced Topics for Developing Smart Contracts and Applications
This chapter covers a range of advanced techniques for smart contract and application development. Building on chapters 6 and 7, you'll learn how to customize the SDK, use private and transient data, and make the most of advanced smart contract packaging techniques. This chapter also introduces design patterns that are particularly helpful in asset transfer, asset trading, and other privacy preserving scenarios. The advanced techniques in this chapter are important for technical architects and software developers alike.
Chapter 9, Network Operation and Distributed Application Building
This chapter helps you build and operate a Fabric network and distributed application for the business entities that participate in our trade scenario. This chapter will also help you learn how to build a production-grade ordering service that generates transaction blocks by consensus of a cluster of nodes running the Raft protocol.
Chapter 10, Enterprise Design Patterns and Considerations
This chapter looks at various design patterns and best practices that can be used to build industry-scale blockchain applications.
Chapter 11, Agility in a Blockchain Network
This chapter focuses on the aspects required to maintain agility in a blockchain network. Applying DevOps concepts, the reader is presented with a continuous integration / continuous delivery pipeline.
Chapter 12, Governance – A Necessary Evil of Regulated Industries
Governance is a necessary evil for regulated industries. However, governance is required not only for business networks that deal with use cases for regulated industries, but it also is a good practice to ensure the longevity and scalability of a business network. This chapter explores vital considerations for production readiness for any founder-led blockchain network.
Chapter 13, Life in a Blockchain Network
This chapter aims to raise the reader's awareness on the key activities and challenges that organizations and consortiums may face when adopting a distributed ledger solution, ranging from the management of network and application changes to the maintenance of adequate performance levels. A successful network deployment will hopefully see many organizations join it and the number of transactions increase.
Chapter 14, Hyperledger Fabric Security
This chapter lays the foundation for the security design of blockchain networks. Various security constructs are discussed and Hyperledger Fabric security is explained in detail. An essential chapter to understand security design considerations.
Chapter 15, Blockchain's Future, Protocol, Commercialization, and Challenges Ahead
This chapter looks ahead and discusses the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. Through the use of open technologies, it invites readers to engage in and promote the blockchain innovation agenda.