IBM Integration Bus - Effective Application Development; IBM InterConnect Conference, Feb 2015

1. © 2015 IBM Corporation
IBM Integration Bus
Effective Application Development
Andrew Coleman
IBM Integration Bus Development
Co-Chair, W3C XML Query Working Group

2. What should you consider when building connectivity solutions?
▪ What technology is provided to help you?
▪ What design techniques should you know about?
▪ What should you try to avoid?
Main points
▪ Design with IIB features
▪ Design for performance and scalability
▪ Design for administration
▪ Design with interfaces
▪ Design consistently
▪ Test
Effective Application Development

3. 1. Design with IIB facilities

4. Tools of the Trade!

5. Create Your Connectivity Solution
Built-in nodes encapsulate transports, technologies and applications
• Our intent is always to make the common tasks easy, and the rest possible!
• Use the built-in nodes to reduce the amount of custom code required
• This makes best use of the built-in facilities like activity trace and resource statistics

6. Integration Bus can interact with a huge range of environments
Transports and protocols
• MQ / SOAP / HTTP / TCPIP / JMS
Data repositories
• File / Database / IMS
Applications
• SAP / Siebel / PeopleSoft / JDEdwards
• CICS / IMS
• .Net
APIs
• SCA
• CORBA
All input nodes can be configured to work with any message format.
Getting data in and out of IIB

7. Transformation Options
WMB and Integration Bus have several transformation options:
▪ Mapping
▪ XSLT
▪ ESQL
▪ Java
▪ .NET
Reflects the importance of transformation in connectivity solutions
▪ User-defined nodes supported for Java and C/C++
Every transformation option has strengths and weaknesses!
▪ Performance and scalability
▪ Backend integration
▪ Skill sets and learning curve
▪ Developer usability
▪ Portability and maintenance
Use a transformation technology appropriate to the problem at hand!

8. Subflows are simply message flows that are invoked from another
flow
• Input and output nodes in the subflow become terminals in the main flow
• Use subflows to break up large problems into smaller more manageable chunks
Subflows are directly deployable to the runtime
• Shared subflows deployed just once per execution group (or application)
• No need to redeploy message flows after changes to shared routines are made
• Redeployment of a subflow is automatically picked up by any consumers
Subflows

9. Message Modelling
Models are needed for parsing, validation and transformation
• Models avoid the need to write custom code to parse messages!
Graphical mapper requires models to display the message structure
• ESQL editor provides in line validation of code that navigates message trees

10. XML documents and messages are modelled using XML schemas
• XSDs and WSDLs are deployed directly to the runtime – no import required!
Non XML data (both text and binary) is defined using DFDL schemas
• Data Format Description Language standardised through the Open Grid Forum
• DFDL schemas replace message set projects and the MRM message domain
• Input nodes support DFDL alongside XMLNSC, JSON, MRM etc
New model based tooling to design and test DFDL schema models
• Test parsing, test data generation and parse-by-example all built into editor!
• As with XSDs, DFDL schemas are also deployed directly to the runtime
Message Modelling

12. 2. Design for Performance
and Scalability

13. Design for Performance
There are several areas that incur a processing cost
• Parsing and serialization of messages as they enter and exit the flow
• Business logic such as transformations executed during message processing
• Transformation cost includes general complexity, tree navigation and tree copying
• External resources such as interactions with databases and queue managers
Message flow design is critical to achieve high performance and
scalability
• For example using global units of work to achieve transactionality across a flow
Performance is a large (and important) topic in its own right
• There is a wealth of information and guidance available online!

14. Design for Scalability
Large messages can consume large amounts of memory/CPU
There is an industry trend toward larger data sets
• Already apparent in IIB deployments
A flow with a large memory overhead can
• slow down other flows by causing swapping
• in the worst case, bring down the execution group
Recommendations
• Consider whether a message 10 times the current size would be able
to be handled without a problem
• Where appropriate, use large message handling techniques in your
flows ( see Large Messaging sample )

15. Design for Scalability
Loops in a message flow are exactly like a recursive function call
• So each iteration of the loop consumes some stack space
Avoid loops unless you are certain that the number of iterations
will not become large
• Stack overflows will bring down the execution group along with all
running flows!
• There is usually an alternative design that avoids looping

16. 3. Design for Administration

17. Applications, Libraries and Services
Applications package end-to-end connectivity solutions
• The concept of an application is shared between the toolkit and runtime
• Applications are deployed and managed as a single unit of isolation
Libraries package resources for reuse (flows, scripts, models)
Resources in an application are not visible to anything else
• Use applications to manage your solutions inside an execution group
A Service is an Application with a well defined interface (WSDL)

18. Shared Libraries
New shared container for reusable artefacts
• Subflows, message models (XSD, DFDL)
• ESQL, maps
• NOT flows!
Saves memory
• Multiple applications can reference a single copy of a shared lib
Separately deployable from the application
Shared libraries have no running state
• Cannot be started or stopped
• No runtime threads assigned
v8/9 static libraries continue to work as before
18
V10

19. Static Libraries verses Shared Libraries
Static Libraries
19
Shared Libraries (v10)
App1
Lib1 Lib2
App2
Lib1 Lib2
App3
Lib1 Lib2
App1
App2ShLib1
ShLib2
App3

20. Configurable Services
Use configurable services to externalize deployment time properties
• Allows deployment information to be configured by a system administrator
• For example, credentials for the database nodes and FTP server and port
• Ideal for moving solutions through staging environments (test to production)

21. Monitoring
Monitoring tools available via Web UI and Integration Explorer
• Statistics monitor resource usage across execution groups
• Range of options to update and visualise the resource statistics
• Activity Logging to focus on resource usage

22. Monitoring
Monitoring also provided on individual message flows
• Quick and easy way to identify hot spots in your solutions!

23. 4. Design with Interfaces

24. Database Services
DBMS represents system of record for key business entities
• Customers, accounts, partners, products all stored in databases
• Integration Bus tools discover and represent these key data
• Integration services extends access to end-user applications
New integration tools discover key database assets
1. Connect to DBMS (e.g. Oracle, DB2 )
2. Discover source artefacts (tables, views, etc.)
3. Map CRUD operations to service interface
4. Save in canonical WSDL document
– Custom bindings for SQL access
5. Re-use database WSDL in multiple scenarios
Many uses for database service definition
• WSDL contains both logical and physical database information
• Drag and drop WSDL to automatically create SQL access methods
• Create new integration service to exploit customized database access
– End-user application consumes as regular (e.g.) web service
Products PartnersCustomers Accounts

25. MQ Services
Service definitions allow you to make best use of available resources
• Facilitates sharing of service information between users and systems
• Allows users to understand interfaces (e.g. CustomerAddress.Update operation)
• Provides a connector with which to exchange technical configuration (e.g. hostname)
• Provides attachment points for associated policies (e.g. authorization)
New framework enables discovery, cataloguing and re-use of services
• Discovery connectors translate the service provider description to a common model
• Interrogate IT systems for definition of technical assets – objects, functions and interaction points
• User selects and refines definition of technical assets
• Service definitions created and associated with technical assets
• Discovered service definitions stored in embedded registry
• Use catalogued services to configure integration solutions
Initial implementation discovers and catalogs MQ service definitions
1. Discover queues from referenced queue manager endpoint
2. IB develops MQ service definition and stores in registry
3. Use service definitions to configure MQ nodes
New and existing nodes will be updated over time
• Completely aligned with runtime connector framework
– Simple protocol points appropriate for style of interaction
– Allows for simple development of custom connectors

26. REST APIs
New container type for implementing REST APIs
Generates framework based on Swagger definition
26
V10

27. 5. Design consistently

28. Patterns for Simplified Development
Creates top-down, parameterized connectivity solutions
Reduces common problems in flow development
Establishes best practices for integration
Reduces time-to-value for solution development
Patterns are easily extended with regular IIB functionality

29. Pattern Generation
Pattern generation creates the production ready projects
• Generated projects reflect the configuration choices of the pattern user
• Configuration is saved so that the pattern can be re-generated if required

30. Built-In Patterns
Integration Bus provides a core set of built-in patterns
These implement a variety of common scenarios
• Web service front end to a MQ based application
• Processing data stored in a file and routing to one or more queues
• Adding a proxy in front of a web service provider
• Processing data from an SAP system and routing to MQ
• Shredding messages and routing to one or more queues
Patterns are selected based on client feedback and field experience
This core set of patterns continues to grow with each release

31. Pattern Authoring
Pattern becomes even more useful when you can create your own!
• Every organization has their own repeating connectivity patterns!
• Pattern authoring is the name we give to this technology in WMB and Integration Bus
We recommend you start with a working solution
• One or more projects
Pattern authoring is a design activity
• It may be long lived
• It is often not sequential
Using patterns is a top-down activity driven by a requirement, but:
• Authoring a working solution is (typically) a bottom-up activity
• So pattern authoring bridges these two different approaches
Patterns have their own development cycle
• Pattern Authoring editor supports this design activity

32. Create Your Working Solution
No change at all - design your solutions as you do today
• Pattern authoring does not change the tools you use to create solutions
• The key to a good pattern is to create a good working solution!

33. Design Your Pattern
Straightforward to create patterns using the Pattern Authoring editor!
• Design the user interface which is presented to your pattern users
• Easy to add branding - style sheets, images and other files as required

34. Packaging a Pattern

35. The Integration API is our Java application development API
• Packaged along with the administration API in ConfigManagerProxy.jar
• Provides a complete Java API to manipulate message flows (and subflows)
The Integration API can be used in standalone applications or in
patterns
• Wide variety of applications are now possible such as business data mashups
• Easy to implement mass creation of message flows during migration projects
Integration API

36. Pattern Communities
Pattern authoring creates patterns whose value multiplies as they
are shared and used by a community of developers
Public and private communities are equally interesting!
A community needs to offer more than just a repository of assets!
• Space for content such as patterns and subflow nodes
• Forums to host discussions and threaded conversations
• Categorisation is important as the community grows! (taxonomies)
• Essential administrative functions such as user management
• News articles and broadcasts keep the site fresh
There are literally dozens of content management systems available
On the commercial side we have tried Lotus Connections and
Rational Asset Manager
Open source projects such as Drupal and Joomla are compelling!

37. Creating a Community Space

38. 6. Test!
Flow Exerciser
V10

39. Flow Exerciser
40
Click to start
recording

40. Flow Exerciser
41

41. Flow Exerciser
42
Now recording – the flow
is greyed out (read-only)

42. Flow Exerciser
43

43. 44

44. Flow Exerciser
45

45. Flow Exerciser
46
Path through the
flow is highlighted
Click to see
message
content
Can re-send the recorded
messages (logical tree assembly)

46. Summary
• Use the features of WMB & IIB to their full extent!
• Message modelling, transformation options, applications and libraries
• Capabilities link in with activity trace, record edit replay, and more
• Libraries and subflows make for simpler designs
• Deployable subflows and libraries extend the benefits to the runtime
• Consider production and performance early on in your design
• In particular, applications and configurable services
• Your system administrator will thank you for this!
• Patterns address time-to-value for your solutions
• It takes just a few minutes to create a pattern!
• Why not create a patterns community in your organisation?
• Developer Edition
• Free edition of IB for use in evaluation, dev, test and production usage
• Fully functional: all nodes available and no time limitations
• Throughput rate limited to 1TPS per integration flow
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