API Archives - IT Jungle

A Closer Look At Enhancements To Integrated Web Services

March 21, 2018 Dan Burger

Technology Refresh 8 for IBM i 7.2 and TR4 for IBM i 7.3 became available last week. One of the enhancements in this TR pertains to the Integrated Web Services (IWS), which Business Architect for IBM i Application Development Tim Rowe calls IWS “one of our most widely used pieces of software from an integrated perspective.”

Web services provide the capability to expose the database to outside developers via APIs and Web services. Although that thought brings a shiver down the spine of many developers who learned the proprietary ways of the AS/400, multi-platform integration is the modern development path. …
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Guru: Searching Teraspace

March 5, 2018 Jon Paris

In my previous tip, Sorting In Teraspace, I looked at how the qsort API can be used to sequence data in ways that SortA can’t begin to approach. Now that the data is sorted, one of the things I may want to do with it is to search it. In this tip I will look at how that can be achieved using the bsearch API. The approach I will be discussing allows for partial key searches and handling the fact that such a search may result in multiple hits.

As you will see when we work through the code, …
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BCD’s Nexus Portal Shows Mobile and API Capabilities

December 6, 2017 Dan Burger

Development in IBM i focused organizations — transitions from green-screen to browser-based applications and from monolithic to modular code — cannot ignore the portal piece of the puzzle. It’s the portal that provides secure, organized access to enterprise information for employees, vendors and customers using all types of devices connected to the Web.

Because so many BCD Software customers are interested in mobile access to data and real-time interactions, the development team got to work on making its Nexus portal more useful and convenient for the tablet and smartphone contingents that crave enhancements to their remote gateways.

“Our development efforts …
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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, …
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Should Spark In-Memory Run Natively On IBM i?

November 6, 2017 Alex Woodie

There’s a revolution happening in the field of data analytics, and an open source computing framework called Apache Spark is right smack in the middle of it. Spark is such a powerful tool that IBM elected to create a distribution of it that runs natively on its System z mainframe. Will it do the same for its baby mainframe, the IBM i?

So, what is Apache Spark, and why should you care? Great questions! Let’s introduce you to Spark.

Spark came out of UC Berkeley’s AMPLab about five years ago to provide a faster and easier-to-use alternative to MapReduce, which …
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One IBM i Route Into the API Economy

September 27, 2017 Alex Woodie

The so-called API Economy is emerging as a legitimate engine for driving the growth of commerce around the world. But with mostly monolithic apps written years ago, the IBM i installed base isn’t well positioned to be a major player. However, there are alternative pathways into the API Economy for IBM i shops, if they know where to look.

The API Economy refers to the idea that, by exposing bits and pieces of our internal systems out to the world through well-defined application programming interfaces (APIs) – which usually manifest REST-based Web services, although SOAP and XML files will work …
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Watson In The Real World

September 25, 2017 Dan Burger

The fundamental value of IBM’s Watson technology and the ability to put it to work effectively in IBM i shops is still being sorted out. Certainly, technical challenges exist, but that’s not unique to new technology like cognitive computing. IT by nature is challenging. Learning to do more with technology that’s been around for years also has its challenges. Acquiring knowledge, skills and best practices should be, and generally is, an ongoing habit.

Sharing what we know about solving challenges helps everyone in the community. So it is with Watson and IBM i. Who is making it work and who …
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Rocketing Ahead With An API Engine

June 26, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

The history of computing is governed by a plethora of opposing forces, with the polar opposites interweaving and interleaving to create more general trends that undulate and cause the waves we ride on top of or get swamped by. There is a tendency toward abstraction and the desire to get closer to the iron to wring the absolute most performance out of a specific system, for instance. Humans don’t think in binary or assembler – well most humans don’t but there are always a few genius weirdos – so the speed of execution is sacrificed for the speed of the …
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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 …
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