Explore the new features in IBM Integration Bus version 10.0.0.11

Fix pack 11 provides a new App Connect REST Request node which can be placed in a message flow to issue requests to an IBM App Connect REST API. The node uses an imported Swagger document (in either JSON or YAML format), which defines the REST API and the operations that are available. When you have downloaded the API, you can import it into your IIB Toolkit workspace and on the App ConnectREST Request node’s properties, select the operations that you want to invoke. The App Connect REST Request node is contained in the Cloud Connectors drawer of the flow palette, and is represented in the IBM Integration Toolkit by the following icon:

To make it even easier to link IBM Integration Bus and App Connect there is also a new pattern available in the IIB Toolkit Pattern Explorer view:

The pattern will generate you a sample IIB message flow which can be driven using MQ, HTTP or File transports. The flow will create a simple JSON request message of the right format (using either a Compute, JavaCompute or graphical Mapping node) which can be used to invoke an App Connect REST API.

The IIB pattern also generates an App Connect template which can be imported into the App Connect Designer Web UI tooling so that you have an App Connect REST API flow ready to communicate with your SaaS application of choice.

For a while now, IIB installations have been able to send operational information to a centralised dashboard hosted on IBM Cloud:

• System Logs (from IIBv10.0.0.7)
• Accounting and Statistics performance information (from IIBv10.0.0.9)
• Resource Statistics performance information (from IIBv10.0.0.10)

Fix pack 11 extends these facilities further to also include Activity Log information. To enable the reporting of Activity Log data to IBM Cloud Log Analysis, you must first enable your IBM Integration Bus integration servers to send logging information to the service, and then configure an ActivityLog configurable service to send the Activity Log data to Log Analysis.

 mqsichangeproperties TESTNODE -c ActivityLog -o ActivityLogConfigurableServiceName -n bluemixReporting -v true

For more information, see Reporting Activity Log data to IBM Cloud Log Analysis.

Starting with Fix Pack 11, IBM Integration Bus now ships with Java 8 on all supported distributed platforms except Solaris and HP. IBM Integration Bus v10 on z/OS also supports Java 8 as a prerequisite component from IIB 10.0.0.11 onwards. There are some limitations with the Java 8 support for application developers, and after applying the fix pack you may encounter known issues which are caused as a result of upgrading to Java 8 if you try to move back to an earlier fix pack (where Java is not yet at v8). If you have any concerns about this, then please read about the details in this accompanying article.

This fix pack also adds Ubuntu 16.04 Long Term Service release to our supported platforms.

There is now a pre-built IIB Docker image available for easy download from the Docker Registry Hub website!

The image contains a pre-installed Developer Edition licensed IIB at the latest fix pack level. Starting from this Docker image, you can run a container which will create and start an Integration Node to which you can deploy integration solutions. You can optionally specify an Integration Node name using the NODENAME environment variable and an Integration Server name using the SERVERNAME environment variable. After downloading the image, to run it, use a command like this:

 docker run --name myNode -e LICENSE=accept -e NODENAME=MYNODE -e SERVERNAME=MYSERVER -P iib

If you wish, you can also deploy an IBM Integration Bus BAR file by specifying a Docker volume which makes the BAR file(s) available when the container is started:

 docker run --name myNode -v  /local/path/to/BARs:/tmp/BARs -e LICENSE=accept -e NODENAME=MYNODE -e SERVERNAME=MYSERVER -P iib

Remember, if you want to build an IIB image the way you like it, that’s fine too. If you want a head start, you can find the scripts we used on Github.

Since fix pack 10.0.0.10 was released at the beginning of September, IBM has announced and brought to market our next generation private cloud platform, IBM Cloud Private (V2.1). IBM Cloud Private includes a Catalog providing a simple, self service, access to IBM and Open Source software which has been built for Kubernetes. This catalog is a collection of Deployment Packages (using Helm charts) displayed as tiles, which provide access to software under separate license terms.

For more information on deploying IIB to IBM Cloud Private, check out our Knowledge Center

Helm is the open standard for Application Packaging and Deployment for Kubernetes. IIB has its own Helm chart which we have also made freely available outside of IBM Cloud Private, should you wish to use this to help deploy IIB in a Kubernetes environment:

Helm charts automate the deployment of resources and prereqs including locations of Docker images. The IIB Helm chart lets you control things like the number of processors and amount of memory assigned to the IIB Docker image by the Kubernetes system: