Explore the new features in App Connect Enterprise version 11.0.0.8

From ACEv11.0.0.8, as part of a message flow you can configure the execution of business rules which have been defined using IBM’s Operational Decision Manager product. This feature embeds the rule engine capabilities inside the integration server process, providing faster performance by avoiding the network latencies involved with a remote invocation of the ODM rules engine.

Note: The Operational Decision Manager (ODM) support in this fix pack has been classified as Technology Preview Code and is subject to the terms of use specified in Notices for IBM App Connect Enterprise. Although not guaranteed, it is IBM’s intention to lift the Technology Preview status and declare this feature production ready in a subsequent App Connect Enterprise fix pack.

Business rules are policies, constraints, or required operations that apply to a specific set of business conditions or dependencies. For example, a bank could use a business rule to decide whether a credit check is required for a customer opening a new account. In the context of a message flow, a business rule execution could be used as part of enriching a message, to help with transformation or to make a routing decision.

In IBM Operational Decision Manager, business rules are organized into rulesets and RuleApps. A ruleset is a decision-making program that can be processed by a rule engine to yield a decision, based on input and output parameters. A RuleApp is a deployable management unit for ODM Rule Execution Servers and can contain one or more rulesets. To configure the execution of a business rule as part of a message flow, the flow needs to pass parameters into the rule which is to be executed. There are two different ways to configure the execution of ODM business rules in a message flow:

• By wiring an ODM Rules node in to your message flow
• By wiring a Java Compute node in to your message flow

A new user is likely to begin by trying out the first of these options, by simply dragging and dropping an ODM Rules node into their message flow:

When you click the Configure button on the message flow node’s property a wizard will guide you in connecting to your ODM server from which you can disover ruleset definitions which you would like to execute. The rules will take data from the logical tree which arrives at the message flow node. These parameters which have a direction which can be IN, OUT, or INOUT. An ODMRules node can be used to execute rulesets that have XML parameters.

As shown in the screen shot above, the ODM Rules message flow node is configured with the name of a policy in a policy project. This policy is a new type of policy known as an “ODM Server” policy, which specifies the connection information which the ACE integration server requires in order to communicate with the ODM Rules Execution Server. There is an example of such a policy shown below:

App Connect Enterprise v11.0.0.8 also provides another new option for the execution of ODM business rules – a JavaCompute node. A JavaCompute can be used to execute rulesets that have either Java or XML parameters. You must attach an ODM Server policy to a JavaCompute node to control how it accesses a remote ODM Rule Execution Server. For more information, check out the details in the Knowledge Center.

This fix pack release provides new capability in the product’s administrative Web UI to update and override a message flow’s User Defined Properties. This feature is best described using a simple example. Consider the very simple message flow shown in the screen shot which is designed to receive any data over HTTP and respond with a JSON reply containing the current values for MyFavouriteFootballTeam and MyFavouriteFood.

User Defined Properties or UDPs for short, can be defined and a default value provided by switching to the User Defined Properties tab, which is found in the Toolkit at the base of the message flow canvas:

Having deployed the message flow, navigate to the message flow’s properties tab as shown below:

Scroll to the bottom of this page and you should see the User Defined Propeerties and their current values:

Click the Override user-defined property button to apply an override:

In this example, I’ve changed my mind about my favourite food. Once applied, you will be returned to the previous display where the updated value is displayed:

In this example, if you were to then test the flow, the updated property would be reported back to you as well:

To improve the initial experience users have of App Connect Enterprise, we have chosen to have flow statistics turned on by default for integration nodes and integration servers created using version 11.0.0.8 (or later fix packs which we release in future). Existing servers and nodes will keep their existing settings when 11.0.0.8 is adopted, so existing users won’t see any change to the current behaviours you have configured. If you don’t like statistics being turned on, you can of course turn them off if you prefer. The relevant settings which control whether statistics are turned on are found within the server.conf.yaml file (for integration servers) or node.conf.yaml file (for integration nodes). The snippet below shows the new flow statistics settings which are applied when you create a new integration server:

Statistics:
  # All applications and message flows will inherit the Snapshot and Archive values set here, unless they have been set
  # to a specific value other than inherit via the WebUI, mqsichangeflowstats command, Toolkit or apiv2 REST
  # Notes
  #  - values here can be overridden by 'overrides/server.conf.yaml'
  #  - to publish on MQ or MQTT, also configure Events.OperationalEvents, and set outputFormat  to include json and/or xml
  #  - to display in the WebUI Snapshot.outputFormat must include json; nodeDataLevel needs to be set to basic or advanced
  Snapshot:
    publicationOn: 'active'      # choose 1 of : active|inactive, explictly set 'active'. If unset will default to 'inactive'
    #accountingOrigin: 'none'    # choose 1 of : none|basic, default none
    nodeDataLevel: 'basic'       # choose 1 of : none|basic|advanced, explictly set 'basic'. If unset will default to 'none'
    outputFormat: 'json'         # choose comma separated list of one or more of : csv,json,xml,usertrace. Explictly set to 'json' for WebUI. If unset will default to ''
    #threadDataLevel: 'none'     # choose 1 of : none|basic. If unset will default to 'none'

With these new defaults applied, in the administrative Web UI, when you navigate to the Flow statistics tab for a message flow you will soon start seeing useful data graphs (the snapshot interval is 20 seconds, so you might briefly see a message telling you that the data will be shown as soon as it arrives:

Within 20 seconds you will then see the graphs take shape and data will continue to be plotted:

In this fix pack, a similar change has also been made to the default settings for Resource Statistics as shown in the server.conf.yaml file extract below:

  Resource:
    reportingOn: true            # choose 1 of : true|false, Set to 'true'. If unset will default to 'false'
    #outputFormat: ''            # comma separated list of : file

If you navigate to the Resource Statistics tab at the integration server level of the Web UI you will see statistics graphed for the server’s resource managers, such as the information shown below for the JVM for example:

The App Connect Enterprise administrative Web UI has some new features in fix pack 8 to make it easier to apply detailed configuration for the integration server’s statistics settings. Note the new menu for the configuration of statistics on a server:

The detailed menu of options shown in the screen shot above is being applied at the integration server level, and results in server-wide settings. Typically, you will most frequently apply statistics configuration in the same way across an entire integration server, but it is also possible to apply very fine grained settings which differ from one message flow to another. Given this rare but important use case, you can also launch a similar configuration panel but by clicking the context menu from a specific message flow deployed to the server. Although the menus look similar, if you choose to override a property on a specific flow, then you will note a warning at the base of the dialog designed to draw your attention and ensure this was your genuine intention. An example of this is shown below:

In the last App Connect Enterprise fix pack we blogged about a new built-in Transformation Advisor command which provided support for the analysis of existing IBM Integration Bus v10 integration nodes to explore how they could be moved to adopt a container based architecture. The initial release of the tool in fix pack 7 looked for message flow node instances which might require consideration when moving to containers. The initial set of 18 potential issues which were recognised in fix pack 7, have been expanded to a set of 35 issues recognised in fix pack 8: