How to use IBM® App Connect with Vespa

Vespa is a platform that is designed for rapid computation on large datasets. It stores and indexes structured text and vector data, allowing for fast queries, data processing, and machine learning model inference at scale.

Availability:

App Connect Enterprise as a Service connector
Local connector in containers (Long Term Support Cycle-3 release) 13.0.7.0-r1 or later
Local connector in containers (Continuous Delivery release) 13.0.4.0-r1 or later

Supported product and API versions

To find out which product and API versions this connector supports, see Detailed System Requirements on the IBM Support page.

Connecting to Vespa

Complete the connection fields that you see in the App Connect Designer Connect > Applications and APIs page or flow editor. If necessary, work with your Vespa administrator to obtain these values.

Vespa has the following connection fields.

Server URL is the URL for the API server that makes runtime calls.
Token is the access token that is used to access the Vespa APIs.
Allow self-signed certificates is set to true if you want to be able to accept self-signed certificates that are trusted and used only in a nonproduction environment. The default is false.
Override server URL is required if you want to use the private network client to connect to an endpoint in a private network, or if you want to override the server URL. Specify an override value for the host and port for the connector in the format <http or https>://<host_name>:<port>. If you're not using the private network client or don't require an override, don't enter a value in this field.
Private network connection: Select the name of a private network connection that App Connect uses to connect to your private network. This list is populated with the names of private network connections that are created from the Private network connections page in the Designer instance. You see this field only if a switch server is configured for this Designer instance. For more information, see Connecting to a private network from App Connect Designer. (In App Connect Designer 12.0.10.0-r1 or earlier instances that include this field, the display name is shown as Agent name.)

To obtain the connection values for Vespa, see Obtaining connection values for Vespa.

To connect to a Vespa endpoint from the App Connect Designer Applications and APIs page for the first time, expand Vespa, then click Connect.

Tip:

Before you use the account that is created in App Connect in a flow, rename the account to something meaningful that helps you to identify it. To rename the account on the Applications and APIs page, select the account, open its options menu (⋮), then click Rename Account.

General Considerations

Before you use App Connect Designer with Vespa, take note of the following considerations:

You can see lists of the trigger events and actions that are available on the Applications and APIs page of the App Connect Designer.
For some applications, the events and actions depend on the environment and whether the connector supports configurable events and dynamic discovery of actions. If the application supports configurable events, you see a Show more configurable events link under the events list. If the application supports dynamic discovery of actions, you see a Show more link under the actions list.
If you are using multiple accounts for an application, the set of fields that is displayed when you select an action for that application can vary for different accounts. In the flow editor, some applications always provide a curated set of static fields for an action. Other applications use dynamic discovery to retrieve the set of fields that are configured on the instance that you are connected to. For example, if you have two accounts for two instances of an application, the first account might use settings that are ready for immediate use. However, the second account might be configured with extra custom fields.

Events and Actions

Vespa events

These events are for changes in this application that trigger a flow to start completing the actions in the flow.

Note: Events are not available for changes in this application. You can trigger a flow in other ways, such as at a scheduled interval or at specific dates and times.

Vespa actions

Your flow completes these actions on this application.

Object	Action	Description
Documents	Create document	Creates the document that is contained in the request body that is formatted in JSON.
	Query documents	Use the query documents API to query, rank, and organize data. The request body response is based on the query API reference.
	Retrieve document by filters	Retrieves a document by using filters
	Retrieve documents	Iterate over and get all documents, or a selection of documents, in chunks. Visits are a linear scan of the documents in the cluster. Visiting is for dumping your content for offline processing or backup.
	Update document	Updates a document with the partial update that is contained in the request body that is formatted in JSON.
	Update or create document	Updates or creates a document with the partial update that is contained in the request body that is formatted in JSON.

Model Context Protocol (MCP) support

The Vespa connector supports MCP, and all Vespa actions for the listed objects can be added to an MCP server as tools. For more information on how to configure an MCP server, see Creating and managing MCP servers.