-
RPG, XML, SOAP, and REST: Web Services for IBM i
October 14, 2015 Dan Burger
… Read moreAnyone following the evolution of Web services has seen the RESTful architecture gaining ground quickly on the traditional favorite SOAP architecture. Web development and particularly Web-based mobile development has welcomed REST. To keep up with demand, Krengel Technology has introduced version 3.2 of its RPG-XML Suite, which delivers new Web service capabilities to IBM i customers.
Krengel developed the RPG-XML Suite for RPG developers who, as the Krengel website notes, “have lived through creating Web services in RPG and Java without a well-packaged development toolset.”
Web service basics: An RPG program calls a Web service that resides on another machine.
-
i2Rest Offers Native API Alternative to IWS
August 19, 2020 Alex Woodie
IBM i shops that want to expose their RPG applications as industry standard Web services have a few options to choose from. One solution they should keep on their list is i2Rest, which is a native ILE application that exposes RPG using modern OAuth2 and OpenAPI standards.
We first came across Alexei Baranov’s work back in 2012, when he was involved in the port of the SVN client to IBM i while working at a Moscow, Russia-based consulting firm. Soon thereafter, Baranov started working on developing Web services tools for IBM i.
The first version of his new Web …
Read more -
Rest4i Eyes Digital Transformation Via API
March 21, 2018 Alex Woodie
A new company headed by IBM i software veterans is beginning to turn some heads with a new product aimed at helping IBM i shops with digital transformation strategies. Rest4i, as the outfit is called, says its LXR framework turns IBM i into a lean, mean REST API-serving machine.
Stuart Milligan, who headed the UK software firm Databorough before it was sold to Fresche Legacy (now Fresche Solutions) way back in 2013, says LXR (pronounced “Lexer”) is the result of four years of investment and development in a “pure IBM i REST API solution.”
Milligan describes LXR as …
Read more -
HATS Finds A RESTful ‘Swagger’
November 13, 2017 Alex Woodie
IBM i shops will gain access to new API tooling on Thursday, when IBM ships a new release of its Rational Host Access Transformation Services (HATS) software that supports Swagger, a popular open-source specification for designing, generating, documenting, and consuming REST-based APIs.
APIs built using the Representational State Transfer (REST) protocol have become the primary way that companies expose their applications and data in a programmatic way. By defining one’s application program interfaces (APIs) in the RESTful style – as opposed to, say, the older, XML-heavy Simple Object Application Protocol (SOAP) style – companies can join in, and partake of, …
Read more -
IBM i, Watson & Bluemix: The REST Of The Story
June 21, 2017 Dan Burger
Integrated Web Services is nothing new for IBM i. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing new in Web services. A couple of years ago, IBM introduced Bluemix, an integration framework that, among other things, allows applications on other systems to connect with business logic running on i. The Bluemix tooling was designed to consume REST APIs, which can be used to connect Watson and IBM i. That’s where the newness is evident.
The plumbing that’s necessary to make these things happen is being built by the IBM i development team led by Tim Rowe, business architect for IBM i …
Read more -
REST Services For IBM i In developerWorks Spotlight
February 4, 2015 Alex Woodie
… Read moreOne of the exciting new features added to IBM i in late 2014 is support for REST-based Web services. The rest of the world has accepted REST services as the de-facto integration standard on the Web, and now this approach is being supported within IBM i too. But how do you actually go about building and managing REST services in IBM i? Let the smart IBMers at developerWorks show you how.
REST services are very new to IBM i, having been announced by IBM just four months ago and delivered in late December 2014 with the various HTTP Group
-
So You Want To Do Containerized Microservices In the Cloud?
June 30, 2021 Alex Woodie
As a modernization consultant working in IBM’s Rochester, Minnesota, lab, Amy Anderson gets to hear from some of the most tech-savvy IBM i shops in the world. Her job requires her to know where shops are now, listen to where they want to go, and chart a path that takes them there. That can sometimes be quite a challenge, especially considering the rapid pace of technological change at the moment.
“One of the things that we’re seeing now is the whole industry now is focused on modernization,” Anderson said during her session at the recent NAViGATE conference hosted by COMMON …
Read more -
In Search of Multi-Modal Data Integration
May 5, 2021 Alex Woodie
As the number of data sources that companies use goes up, so too does the complexity of the data pipelines that bring it all together. Instead of using a mix of different tools and technologies for ETL, ELT, and batch integration, some users are seeking a single multi-modal data integration tool that can deliver multiple integration approaches.
One company providing multi-modal data integration is Equalum. The company’s DataOps offering works in various methodologies, including capturing real-time database updates using change data capture (CDC) technology; batch-based extract, transform, and load (ETL) and ELT; and REST- and SOAP-based data integration using …
Read more -
How The Latest TRs Bolster The Core IBM i OS
October 7, 2020 Alex Woodie
Yesterday was Technology Refresh (TR) day for IBM and its IBM i operating system, and Big Blue didn’t disappoint. The company unveiled new releases of IBM i 7.4 and 7.3 that bring a slew of new capabilities to the core operating system as well as surrounding offerings like Db2 Mirror, ACS, and RDi. In this article, we’ll look at enhancements to the core OS and related key features.
During a COMMON webcast Tuesday, IBM i Chief Architect Steve Will touched broadly on a number of enhancements that soon will be available in the TRs. Most of the new capabilities will …
Read more -
Guru: Calling RPG Programs From Python, Part 1
March 30, 2020 Mike Larsen
In a prior article, I showed how to pass parameters to a Python script and execute the script from an RPG program. Based on feedback and my own curiosity, I wanted to see how I could pass parameters to an RPG program and call it from Python. After a bit of research, I found the Python interface itoolkit.
itoolkit is an open source project provided by IBM as an interface to the XMLSERVICE toolkit, which allows us to call RPG programs, service programs, CL programs, and PASE Shell commands. itoolkit can be installed using an SSH terminal with …
Read more
