Developing integration solutions

IBM® App Connect Enterprise provides a flexible environment in which you can develop integration solutions to transform, enrich, route, and process your business messages and data. You can integrate client applications that use different protocols and message formats.

About this task

In IBM App Connect Enterprise, you develop an integration solution by using an application or an integration service.
  • An application is a container for all the resources that are required to create an integration solution.
  • An integration service is a specialized application with a defined interface that acts as a container for a web services solution.

You can use patterns to create integration solutions. Patterns provide reusable solutions that encapsulate a tested approach to solving a common architecture, design, or deployment task in a particular context.

An integration solution is the container for the resources that you develop to process your business messages and data. IBM App Connect Enterprise manages three sets of resources to integrate your applications, messages, and data:
  • Message flows
  • Message flow nodes
  • Message models

A message flow is a sequence of processing steps that run in an integration node when an input message is received. An integration node is a set of execution processes that host one or more message flows to route, transform, and enrich in-flight messages.

You can configure message flows to use one or both of the supported communication models, point-to-point and publish/subscribe.

You can share the project for your integration solution with others by exporting and importing the project as a compressed file known as a project interchange file. For example, you can export a project interchange file from the IBM App Connect Enterprise Toolkit and others can import the file into their IBM App Connect Enterprise Toolkit to share the development of an integration solution or to otherwise use that solution as the starting point for a new integration solution.

You can also copy project directories from your workspace directory to another location; for example, to backup the project directory or to use in another workspace directory.

Procedure

Read the following sections to learn more about developing integration solutions. You can also use the Tutorials Gallery in the IBM App Connect Enterprise Toolkit to explore some pre-built integration solutions.

What to do next

When you create a project, it is recommended to avoid using spaces in the project name. Although using spaces in the name is valid, you might encounter problems. For example: A scenario where an XML schema file located in project X references an XML schema file project Y, either through import or include statements. If the referenced schema in the project contain spaces in project name, the name does not resolve, and you receive errors.