In configurations where IBM® Content Integrator is geographically remote from native repository sources, the URL addressability example can be used to reduce the latency cost to retrieve content items. The URL addressability example is in the examples folder.
All items that are addressable through Content Integrator, such as content, folders, work items, and queues, have a Universal Resource Name (URN) as a unique identifier. That identifier can be used at any time to retrieve the item through a Representational State Transfer (REST) Web service called URL addressability.
From a content integration server URN, a simple URL can be constructed to retrieve any item through a standard HTTP request to the content integration server if the user or application has sufficient security rights to the underlying content.
Both the native binary content and XML representations of the item and its metadata can be retrieved. In the XML representation, other repository items are referenced by their URL by using XLink.
Very simple and loosely coupled integrations can be created between content integration server and other applications by using the REST architecture. From a repository item handle as an API object or from a URN to any repository item that Content Integrator can access, the corresponding URL can be constructed. URL addressability then gives users and application developers a mechanism to dereference the URL at any point by making a simple HTTP request to Content Integrator. The REST architecture allows the creation of integrations that do not involve the Integration API, including the use of URL in a hyperlink tag in HTML, sending the URL in e-mail, or storing and using the URL in any other application that can handle URLs or HTML.
Native content that is retrieved through URL addressability is brokered over the network by access services and is not retrieved directly from the connector or the repository by the browser. Direct HTTP access to native content is provided by HTTP access.
