IBM App Connect Enterprise Toolkit

The IBM® App Connect Enterprise Toolkit is an integrated development environment and graphical user interface based on the Eclipse platform.

Application developers work in separate instances of the IBM App Connect Enterprise Toolkit to develop resources associated with message flows. The IBM App Connect Enterprise Toolkit connects to one or more integration servers to which the message flows are deployed.

You can install the IBM App Connect Enterprise Toolkit only on Windows and Linux®.1 You can only view and interact with integration servers that you have created in IBM App Connect Enterprise Version 11.0.

When you start the IBM App Connect Enterprise Toolkit, a single window is displayed. This window is the IBM App Connect Enterprise Toolkit, which contains one or more perspectives.
Note: Although the IBM App Connect Enterprise Toolkit is based on the Eclipse platform, you must not start the IBM App Connect Enterprise Toolkit by running a command to start Eclipse. If you start the Eclipse platform directly, runtime functions in the IBM App Connect Enterprise Toolkit do not work correctly. Always start the IBM App Connect Enterprise Toolkit by using either of the following methods:
  • On Windows:
    • Use the Windows Start menu option for IBM App Connect Enterprise 11.0.0.n > 11.0.0.n.
    • From the IBM App Connect Enterprise Console, type ace toolkit.
  • On Linux:
    • From the command environment, type ./ace toolkit.

A perspective is a collection of views and editors that you use to complete a specific task, or work with specific types of resource. The two significant perspectives in the IBM App Connect Enterprise Toolkit are the Integration Development perspective for application development, and the Debug perspective for debugging message flows. The first time that you start the IBM App Connect Enterprise Toolkit, the Integration Development perspective is displayed. For more information about perspectives, see IBM App Connect Enterprise Toolkit perspectives.

An editor is a component of the IBM App Connect Enterprise Toolkit that is used to edit or browse the resources that are accessible from the IBM App Connect Enterprise Toolkit. For more information about editors, see Editors.

Resources are the projects, folders, and files that you work with in the IBM App Connect Enterprise Toolkit workspace. By default, these resources are stored with their metadata in the workspace directory in your local file system. For more information about resources, see Resources.

1 The Enterprise Toolkit can also be installed on MacOS, but only as part of IBM App Connect Enterprise for Developers for MacOS.