IBM Intelligent Operations Center REST interface

IBM® Intelligent Operations Center provides a set of APIs that are implemented by using Representational State Transfer (REST) Services. The REST services provide a set of uniform resource identifiers (URIs) that access data in IBM Intelligent Operations Center components, such as system properties and key performance indicators (KPIs).

You can call the services with any HTTP client application, and define an expected response in the form of a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) object. The JSON format can be easily parsed and processed by JavaScript, and other products, tools, and languages, which gives you greater flexibility in using your own environment.

Many of the services take a simple HTTP GET URI as input. More complicated services take JSON input through HTTP GET for retrieval, HTTP POST for create, or HTTP PUT for update. Results are returned in JSON, and error messages and status indicators are returned in the HTTP response as JSON output.

Resource URIs

Each IBM Intelligent Operations Center REST resource URI has the following format:
http://{host}:{port}//ibm/ioc/api/{service-name}/{resource}?{parameters}
Where:
  • http://{host}:{port} contains the host address and port
  • ibm/ioc/api is the context root
  • {service-name} represents the service
  • {resource} represents the logical resource
  • {parameters} are the parameters to apply to the query

REST services access

Access to the REST services is restricted to authorized IBM Intelligent Operations Center users. In addition, access to the POST, PUT, and DELETE methods for most services is restricted to administrative users. An administrative user is a member of at least one of the following security groups: SystemAdmins, and SolutionAdmins.

Resource versions

The following changes are considered compatible between versions and must be expected by clients:
  • Adding a REST resource relationship to the resource model, without affecting existing navigation.
  • Adding additive information to REST representations that do not affect existing clients.
  • Adding a MIME type or representation support.
  • Adding new properties to existing JSON objects that are returned to a client that are ignored by earlier clients.
  • Adding new properties to existing JSON objects that are received from a client that are defined as optional.

HTTP methods

The IBM Intelligent Operations Center REST interface provides the following HTTP methods:
GET
Read a resource.
POST
Create a resource.
PUT
Update a resource.
DELETE
Delete a resource.

Error handling

For errors that are recognized during the processing of an IBM Intelligent Operations Center REST request, an appropriate HTTP status code is returned to the calling client, for example, 200 OK or 404 Not found.

Supported standards

The IBM Intelligent Operations Center REST APIs support the following Internet standards:
Table 1. Internet standards supported by the IBM Intelligent Operations Center REST APIs
Standard Reference
HTTP 1.1 RFC 2616
MIME, Part 1: Format of Internet Message Bodies RFC 2045
MIME, Part 2: Media Types RFC 2046
MIME Media Types The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (IANA)
JSON Schema Internet Engineering Task Force