Hyperledger Composer Playground local files

Question

I'm a beginner with Hyperledger and I have some questions about Hyperledger Composer:

What's the difference between Hyperledger Composer and Composer Playground?
From what I understand Playground is just a user interface for the configuration, deployment and testing of a business network. So, isn't there any differences between deploy a business network with Playground and with Hyperledger Composer using Yeoman? (as shown for example in this tutorial)

I installed Composer Playgroung locally with this official tutorial. After creating a new business network, where can I find the related files on my machine?

What are all the operation I need to run every time I start up my machine to continue developing?
Sometimes just running ./startFabric.sh makes Playground return “Error trying to ping. Make sure chaincode has successfully instantiated and try again”

Do I have to export my business network card from Playground every time I want to test the RESTful API’s (using composer-rest-server)?

Answer 1

A blockchain project, Hyperledger Composer helps users interact with Hyperledger fabric. It includes UI, CLI, and NPM(SDK) package. Being a testing & development tool, Composer Playground lets users create blockchain smart contracts and deploy the same in local memory for testing purposes. However, for production purposes, the usage of composer-CLI is suggested.

Composer playground keeps all data in the ".composer" folder. For picking up the BNA, Composer Playground needs to be connected to Hyperledger Fabric. 

In my personal opinion, 

First run ./stopFabric.sh and then run ./startFabric.sh. 

This will prohibit all the Docker containers. However, if you have installed your own BNA, simply ping or notify the network about the same. 

Once data is imported to the composer rest server then, your issue will be resolved. And the best part is you do not need to import it again while the service is running. 

Note: You can create a stateful composer rest server by adding mongo in it. 

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