Using the IBM App
Connect Enterprise Toolkit, you can
develop integration solutions and deploy them to the dedicated runtime
of IBM App Connect
Enterprise and to App Connect on IBM Cloud. You can use an extensive
range of administration and systems management options to manage your
integration solutions. This documentation provides details about working
with this core software, referred to simply as IBM App Connect
Enterprise.
Using the capabilities of IBM App Connect Professional (bundled
as part of IBM App Connect
Enterprise), you can quickly
connect hybrid environments that are comprised of public clouds, private
clouds, and on-premises applications. You can develop integrations
by using a "configuration, not coding" approach, with premade integration
templates, and rich connectors to speed development time. For more
information about working with App Connect Professional, see the
IBM App Connect Professional documentation.
IBM App Connect
Enterprise can also use an extensive
range of SaaS connectors, which can run on premises using the bundled
App Connect Professional software or on the cloud using IBM App Connect
on IBM Cloud. This capability is only available if you have purchased
IBM App Connect on IBM Cloud. For more information about working with
App Connect on IBM Cloud, see the
IBM App Connect on IBM Cloud docs in the IBM
Integration community on developerWorks
You can use IBM App Connect
Enterprise to connect
applications together, regardless of the message formats or protocols
that they support.
This connectivity means that your diverse applications can interact
and exchange data with other applications in a flexible, dynamic,
and extensible infrastructure. IBM App Connect
Enterprise routes,
transforms, and enriches messages from one location to any other
location:
- The product supports a wide range of protocols: WebSphere MQ, JMS 1.1 and 2.0, HTTP and
HTTPS, web services (SOAP and REST), File, Enterprise Information
Systems (including SAP and Siebel), and TCP/IP.
- It supports a broad range of data formats: binary formats (C and
COBOL), XML, and industry standards (including SWIFT, EDI, and HIPAA).
You can also define your own data formats.
- It supports many operations, including routing, transforming,
filtering, enriching, monitoring, distribution, collection, correlation,
and detection.
IBM App Connect
Enterprise software can be installed
directly on a physical machine running in your own Data Center, in
a VMWare virtual machine, in a Docker image, as part of an IBM Cloud
Private installation, or installed
by you into a public cloud such as IBM Cloud, AWS, or Microsoft Azure.
The Docker images can be easily scaled and managed by using orchestration
frameworks, such as Kubernetes, alongside other components within
a modern architecture.
Your interactions with IBM App Connect
Enterprise can
be considered in two broad categories:
- Application development, test, and deployment.
You can choose
from a range of tools optimized for the users' skillsets and the integration
capabilities they want to exploit:
- For core IT teams that manage the key systems and packaged applications,
there are rich tools to support all styles of interaction, powerful
mapping, parsing and transformation. A broad range of functions, which
include built-in unit testing and the ability to perform pre-deploy
validation, alongside linked browser-based tooling for the line-of-business
teams, ensures both developers and non-technical users can rapidly
build integration without the need for code.
- Knowledge workers and citizen integrators in lines of business
can take advantage of the simpler, no-coding, web-based App
Connect Designer to connect applications in the cloud and with
applications and resources in hybrid environments. Alternatively,
they can innovate on-premises applications for themselves to automate
information and process flows by using a no-coding approach while
taking advantage of the multi-tenant, cloud runtime of IBM App Connect
on IBM Cloud.1
- Integration specialists can choose to use the web-based App Connect
Designer to develop, test, and deploy general connections quickly,
or use a full Integrated Development Environment (IDE) to tackle more-detailed
and challenging integration requirements.
- Using theIBM App
Connect Enterprise Toolkit to develop
integration solutions to transform, enrich, route, and process your
business messages and data. You can integrate client applications
that use different protocols and message formats. The IBM App
Connect Enterprise Toolkit is a natural and familiar
tool for existing users who have experience with the IBM Integration
Toolkit, helping them to easily
switch to developing for IBM App Connect
Enterprise,
accelerate their development of new integration solutions, and preserving
and exploiting their investment in IBM Integration
Bus development skills.
- Using the App Connect Studio (part of IBM App Connect Professional)
to connect hybrid environments that are comprised of public clouds,
private clouds, and on-premises applications. You can develop integrations
by using a "configuration, not coding" approach, with premade integration
templates, and rich connectors to speed development time.
When used in partnership, these tooling experiences truly
unlock the value of enterprise data. IT teams can curate data from
complex packaged applications or systems of record and expose it to
line-of-business users for final mile integration using the designer
tooling, dynamically and without difficulty. This perfect pairing
supports collaboration between the IT teams that manage the data and
the users with the context of where it is needed.
Users of
all these tools and development experience benefit from accelerators,
such as templates for common integration and industry-specific-use
cases.
Developing, testing, and deploying with the
IBM App
Connect Enterprise Toolkit, you can use one or more
of the supplied options to develop your applications:
- Patterns provide reusable solutions that encapsulate a tested
approach to solving a common architecture, design, or deployment task
in a particular context. You can use them unchanged or modify them
to suit your own requirements.
- Message flows describe your application connectivity logic, which
defines the exact path that your data takes in the integration node,
and therefore the processing that is applied to it by the message
nodes in that flow.
- Message nodes encapsulate required integration logic, which operates
on your data when it is processed through your integration node.
- Message trees describe data in an efficient, format independent
way. You can examine and modify the contents of message trees in many
of the nodes that are provided, and you can supply additional nodes
to your own design.
- You can implement transformations by using graphical mapping, Java™, ESQL,
and XSL, and can make your choice based on the skills of your workforce
without having to provide retraining.
- Operational management and performance. IBM App Connect
Enterprise includes the following features
and functionality, which support the operation and performance of
your deployment:
- An extensive range of administration and systems management options
for developed solutions, including the following:
- The IBM App
Connect Enterprise Toolkit.
- The web user interface, which you can use to administer
your integration nodes.
- A comprehensive set of commands, which you can run interactively
or by using scripts.
- The Representational State Transfer API (REST) allows development
of administrative applications without the need to install client
software and web browsers can administer integration nodes through
a user interface.
- Support for a wide range of operating system and hardware platforms.
- A scalable, highly performing architecture, based on requirements
from traditional transaction processing environments.
- Tight integration with software products, from IBM and other vendors, that provide related management
and connectivity services.