Infoview Launches New IBM i Integration Tool
August 21, 2023 Alex Woodie
Infoview Systems has launched a new integration product for IBM i customers. Called infoConnect Hub, the software is designed to expose IBM i data and applications to outside programs as a basic REST API, without any IBM i programming skills required, the company says.
Integration continues to be a challenge for many enterprises, particularly those running “non-standard” platforms like IBM i. When there’s a need to access a program or fetch data from an IBM i server – such as checking a stock balance, delivery date, or fulfillment status – it often requires folks with IBM i skills to develop custom software on IBM i, which slows down the project.
That’s the requirement that Infoview Systems is trying to eliminate with the launch of infoConnect Hub. The new product works by “surfacing back-end IBM i programs as REST APIs” and exposing IBM i data queues to messages busses, such as Apache Kafka, ActiveMQ, or the Azure Service Bus, the company says.
InfoConnect Hub enables customers to call IBM i applications, commands, and service programs from outside the platform using a generic REST API. The software provides a “simple-to-use admin API” for configuring IBM i connections, program call definitions, and data queue listener, the company says.
The integration tool is designed to work as a stand-alone product or in combination with a new change data capture (CDC) product that Infoview Systems unveiled earlier this year. Called InfoCDC, the RPG-based tool works by monitoring IBM i journal receivers for changes to the database, and then streaming the changes to the outside world using Kafka, MuleSoft, or other integration middleware.
“When combined with our InfoCDC real time IBM i change data capture product,” the company says on its blog, “customers can build end-to-end replication and real time analytics pipelines on major messaging and streaming platforms with no custom coding required.”
Infoview Systems is no stranger to the IBM i integration world. For years, the Michigan-based company has worked with a variety of data and application integration middleware on the IBM i platform, including IBM’s WebSphere MQ, Software AG’s webMethods, Kafka, and MuleSoft.
The new offering was written in Java and runs on all major cloud platforms, including AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud, the company says. Users can also run it directly on IBM i.
infoConnect Hub version 1.0 requires at least i5/OS V5R4, although IBM i 7.1 is required if it is used with the new InfoCDC product, the company says in its release notes. For more information, see the company’s website at www.infoviewsystems.com
