Limitations of legacy message flow formats
When you view a deployed message flow or retrieve and import deployed resources or retrieve a deployed BAR file in the IBM® App Connect Enterprise Toolkit, legacy flow formats might be present. You need to be aware of any limitations that these legacy formats can cause.
A legacy message flow can come from compiling and inlining resources in the BAR editor, which creates a .cmf message flow
file. Legacy message flows can also come from migrated message flows created by running the mqsiextractcomponents command, which produces a
.dfmxml file. If a legacy message flow format is present, the integration
server converts the legacy flow to a .msgflow file in response to the IBM App Connect Enterprise
Toolkit. When this conversion takes place, different limitations apply,
depending on whether you are viewing or retrieving resources, or retrieving a BAR file. The following sections describe the limitations for each of
these scenarios:
Viewing, retrieving and importing deployed resources.
The following limitations apply to viewing a deployed message flow, retrieving and importing deployed resources or retrieving a deployed BAR file:
- There are no short descriptions; these descriptions were not stored in the legacy flow formats.
- New flow node canvas locations are generated by the integration server as these are not available in legacy flow formats.
- Flow node icons are square and not rectangular to be consistent with versions of IBM App Connect Enterprise Toolkit that did not have certain flow layouts.
- There are no promoted properties. The legacy flow formats do not have a concept of promoted properties.
- For Passthrough nodes, the canvas label and the label property have the same value.
- User-defined properties (UDP) have the following limitations:
- If a UDP does not have a value or if it has a zero value for numeric types, then the UDP is not be set as mandatory.
- If a UDP was originally an INTEGER, then it is returned as LONG.
- If a UDP was originally a FLOAT or DOUBLE, then it is returned as a FLOAT.
- If a UDP was originally a DATE, a TIME or a TIMESTAMP, then it is returned as a STRING.
- If message flow nodes reference a resolvable policy, then the policy values in the generated .msgflow file are overwritten.
- Monitoring events are included in the generated message flow only if they were originally developed in the Toolkit for the legacy message flow. If the flow references a monitoring profile, then the events from this profile are not written into the generated .msgflow/.subflow.
- For any ESQL that was inlined into a legacy format, an ESQL module reference is generated.
- If the legacy flow includes inlined subflows (non-deployable subflows), then the inlined node content is visible when you view the message flow.
- If the legacy flow has MQReply nodes that were deployed before WebSphere Message Broker V8, then they appear as MQOutput nodes.
- If the legacy flow that is being viewed has DataInsert, DataUpdate, DataDelete, or Warehouse nodes that were deployed before WebSphere Message Broker V8, then they appear as Database nodes.
Retrieving and importing deployed resources
The following limitations apply only to retrieving and importing deployed resources:
- Any ESQL that was inlined into a legacy format is separated from the message flow. If the inlined ESQL includes other ESQL procedures or functions from a PATH statement, then it is not possible to convert the message flow (and its ESQL) to source files.
- If the legacy message flow format contains inlined subflow content (non-deployable subflows), then it is not possible to convert this content to a source .msgflow file.
- If the legacy message flow contains MQPublication nodes or old Mapping nodes (before WebSphere Message Broker V8), then it is not possible to convert the content into a source .msgflow file.
- If the legacy flow has DataInsert, DataUpdate, DataDelete, or Warehouse nodes that were deployed before WebSphere Message Broker V8, then it is not possible to convert the content into a source .msgflow file.
Retrieving a deployed BAR file
The following limitations apply only to retrieving a BAR file:
- When a BAR file is retrieved from an integration server, any legacy flow formats (.cmf or .dfmxml files) are included in their original format so that the content is consistent when that BAR file is redeployed.