corda/docs/source/inthebox.rst

What's included?

The Corda prototype currently includes:

• A peer to peer network with message persistence and delivery retries.
• Key data structures for defining contracts and states.
• Smart contracts, which you can find in the contract-catalogue.
• Algorithms that work with them, such as serialising, hashing, signing, and verification of the signatures.
• API documentation and tutorials (what you're reading).
• A business process orchestration framework.
• Notary infrastructure for precise timestamping, and elimination of double spending without a blockchain.
• A simple REST API, and a web app demo that uses it to present a frontend for IRS trading.

Some things it does not currently include but should gain later are:

• Sandboxing, distribution or publication of smart contract code
• A user interface for administration

The prototype's goal is rapid exploration of ideas. Therefore in places it takes shortcuts that a production system would not in order to boost productivity:

• It uses an object graph serialization framework instead of a well specified, vendor neutral protocol.
• There's currently no permissioning framework.
• Some privacy techniques aren't implemented yet.
• It uses an embedded SQL database and doesn't yet have connectivity support for mainstream SQL vendors (Oracle, Postgres, MySQL, SQL Server etc).