How to set up the Spring Boot Starter

What is the Spring Boot Starter

The Atoti What-If Spring Boot Starter provides auto-configuration for all What-If components. Instead of manually defining beans for the simulation engine, workflow, persistence, and security managers, the starter configures these automatically. Benefits of using the starter:

Minimal configuration required
Sensible defaults for all components
Easy customization through properties
Ability to override any auto-configured bean

Prerequisites

Java 21 or later
Spring Boot 3.x
Atoti Server 6.1.x
Hibernate on the classpath (for JPA persistence)

How to add the dependency

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.activeviam.apps</groupId>
    <artifactId>atoti-what-if-spring-boot-starter</artifactId>
    <version>5.0.0-AS6.1</version>
</dependency>

How to provide required beans

The starter requires two beans from your application:

IDatabaseService

The IDatabaseService is typically provided by your Atoti Server application. Most applications already have this bean configured.

IWhatIfPersistenceProperties

Provides Hibernate configuration for simulation persistence. This bean must return a Map<String, String> of Hibernate properties. The properties can be built in any way, such as from a properties file, environment variables, or hardcoded values. Example using an inline map:

@Bean
public IWhatIfPersistenceProperties whatIfPersistenceProperties() {
    return () -> Map.of(
        "hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto", "update",
        "hibernate.connection.url", "jdbc:h2:mem:submissions;DB_CLOSE_DELAY=-1",
        "hibernate.connection.driver_class", "org.h2.Driver",
        "hibernate.dialect", "org.hibernate.dialect.H2Dialect",
        "hibernate.default_schema", "submissions"
    );
}

Example loading from a properties file:

@Bean
public IWhatIfPersistenceProperties whatIfPersistenceProperties(
        @Value("classpath:hibernate.properties") Resource resource) throws IOException {
    Properties props = new Properties();
    props.load(resource.getInputStream());
    return () -> props.entrySet().stream()
        .collect(Collectors.toMap(
            e -> String.valueOf(e.getKey()),
            e -> String.valueOf(e.getValue())
        ));
}

How to configure properties

Additional configuration is available through atoti.what-if.* properties in your application.yml or application.properties.

Enable/Disable What-If

All What-If features are enabled by default. To disable all What-If auto-configuration:

atoti:
  what-if:
    enable: false

Security configuration

atoti:
  what-if:
    security:
      type: spring  # spring, none, or custom
      use-branch-permissions: true

Distributed mode configuration

atoti:
  what-if:
    distribution:
      enabled: true
      query-node-name: "query-node"
      create-distributed-service: true

See the configuration reference for all available properties.

How to customize auto-configured beans

Any auto-configured bean can be overridden by providing your own bean of the same type. The starter uses @ConditionalOnMissingBean annotations, so your custom beans take precedence. Example: Custom ID generator

@Bean
public IUniqueIdGenerator customIdGenerator() {
    return new MyCustomIdGenerator();
}

Example: Custom security manager

@Bean
public IDatabaseSimulationsSecurityManager customSecurityManager(
        ISimulationPersistenceManager persistenceManager) {
    return new MyCustomSecurityManager(persistenceManager);
}

Next steps

Implementation example for creating simulation definitions
Components to understand the library structure
Permissioning for security configuration details

​What is the Spring Boot Starter

​Prerequisites

​How to add the dependency

​How to provide required beans

​IDatabaseService

​IWhatIfPersistenceProperties

​How to configure properties

​Enable/Disable What-If

​Security configuration

​Distributed mode configuration

​How to customize auto-configured beans

​Next steps