Behavioral changes in Version 12.0

Depending on your current version of IBM® Integration Bus or App Connect Enterprise, IBM App Connect Enterprise 12.0 might introduce technical changes in behavior. These changes might affect your post-migration development tasks.

Review the following changes to see how your post-migration development tasks might be affected:

Platform support

IBM App Connect Enterprise 12.0 is available on:
  • Windows
  • Linux®
  • AIX®

For more information about the operating systems that are supported, see IBM App Connect Enterprise 12.0 system requirements.

Policies control and update message flow and message flow node properties

In IBM Integration Bus 10.0, configurable services were used to control and update connection properties and other operational properties of message flows and message flow nodes at run time. In IBM App Connect Enterprise 12.0, you can use policies for these tasks.

You can migrate your existing configurable policies by using the mqsiextractcomponents command. If you are performing parallel migration, you need to create policies to replace your configurable services.

For more information, see Overriding properties at run time with policies.

Nodes that are no longer available

Your message flows from earlier versions work in IBM App Connect Enterprise 12.0. However, a number of message flow nodes are not available in Version 12.0; if your earlier message flows include them, consider reworking them.

The following nodes are not available in IBM App Connect Enterprise 12.0:
  • DataDelete node
  • DataInsert node
  • DataUpdate node
  • Extract node.
  • Mapping node from WebSphere® Message Broker Version 7.0 and earlier versions
  • MQOptimizedFlow node
  • Real-timeOptimizedFlow node
  • Warehouse node
If you try to use a message flow that contains any of these nodes, the message flow does not start and message BIP2355 is written to the syslog. The message mapping (.msgmap) on these nodes can be viewed but they cannot be deployed to the run time environment in IBM App Connect Enterprise 12.0.

For more information, see Built-in nodes.

IBM App Connect Enterprise 12.0 REST administration API (REST API) Version 2 is available to issue administration commands

IBM App Connect Enterprise 12.0 does not include the IBM Integration API. Instead, you can use the REST API (Version 2) that is provided in IBM App Connect Enterprise 12.0 to issue administration commands.

For more information, see Managing resources by using the administration REST API.

Web user interface extended to support administration tasks

IBM App Connect Enterprise 12.0 does not include IBM Integration Explorer. Instead, the web user interface is extended to support integration node administration tasks such as creating and managing integration servers, and deploying and managing resources.

For more information, see IBM App Connect Enterprise web user interface.

Keystore format for administration security

The certificate store for use in securing the REST Administration port, which is used by the Web User Interface and IBM App Connect Enterprise Toolkit must be a .pem .p12 or .pfx format. This certificate store cannot be in JKS format, and hence must be a separate certificate store from the certificate store that used by the integration server for things such as HTTPS message flow nodes.

For more information, see Authorizing users for administration.

Additional options for administration security

In IBM App Connect Enterprise 12.0, you have two options for configuring administration security. As in previous versions, you can configure queue-based permissions by using IBM MQ queues on the queue manager that is specified on the integration node. Alternatively, you can configure file-based permissions on your integration node, which you set by using the mqsichangefileauth command.

If you configure administration security, then you perform parallel migration to integration nodes that are not configured with queue managers, you must reconfigure your administration security to use file-based permissions. Any security permissions that are set before migration are not retained after migration.

For more information, see Authorizing users for administration.

Administration scripts might need to be updated

A number of commands are not available in this release. In addition, some parameters for administration commands that connect to integration nodes and integration servers were changed. For more information, see IBM App Connect Enterprise commands. The MQBrokerConnectionParameters IBM Integration API class is also deprecated (see the Javadoc for the IBM Integration API).

IBM App Connect Enterprise Toolkit help topics might include details of function that is not available to you

By default, the IBM App Connect Enterprise Toolkit is now configured to use online product documentation to provide context-sensitive help from the latest information that is available. In previous versions, the Toolkit contained local help documentation, which was not automatically updated when new information became available. The way that help is displayed in the IBM App Connect Enterprise Toolkit is not changed. However, the content of the IBM App Connect Enterprise section of the online product documentation is updated when fix packs are made available. If you do not deploy the latest fix pack, the help information might include details of function that is not available to you.

If you do not want to access the online product documentation, you can download and install a local source of product documentation. For more information about local documentation options, see Adding documentation to the IBM App Connect Enterprise Toolkit.

Message maps: change in behavior

In IBM App Connect Enterprise 12.0, the behavior of the Assign transform in the Graphical Data Mapping editor has been corrected when you assign an empty string to an element.
  • In previous versions of IBM Integration Bus, when you perform an Assign transform on a target element that is defined as xsd:string, the Graphical Data Mapping editor sets the internal NULL value in the message tree for that element.
  • In IBM App Connect Enterprise 12.0, when you perform an Assign transform on a target element that is defined as xsd:string, the Graphical Data Mapping editor sets the element value to the empty string '' value.
For message formats such as XML, this change in behavior has no impact on the message flow. However, if your message flow has logic that tests that the value of an element is the internal NULL value, you must modify the test to look for the empty string value. Alternatively, you must modify the map to use the new iib:nullvalue() function. To call the new function, you use a Custom XPath transform.

Message maps are validated at deployment time

In IBM App Connect Enterprise 12.0, message maps are prepared for execution on deployment instead of when the first message flows through the Mapping node. For more information, see Deploying message maps.

Java isolation is active and cannot be disabled

Previous versions of IBM Integration Bus did not support Java™ isolation in applications. All Java that was deployed to the execution group was loaded into a single class loader, which was used by all JavaCompute nodes in all applications. This behavior precluded the use of duplicate classes.

When you create an application in IBM Integration Bus 10.0, Java isolation is enabled by default. For each application, a Java class loader is built that contains only the Java that is deployed in that application and any included static libraries.

When you create an application in IBM App Connect Enterprise 11.0 or later, Java isolation is active and you cannot disable it.

Publication of statistics to the web user interface is enabled by default

When an integration node or integration server is created in IBM App Connect Enterprise Version 11.0.0.8 or later, the publication of resource statistics and message flow snapshot statistics is activated by default. The publication of archive statistics is turned off by default. The publicationOn property in the server.conf.yaml or node.conf.yaml file is explicitly set to active and the outputFormat property is set to json, which enables the publication of snapshot data to the web user interface. The reportingOn property is explicitly set to true, which enables resource statistics for the integration node or server to be published automatically to the web user interface.

For integration nodes and servers that were created before IBM App Connect Enterprise Version 11.0.0.8, the publication of all statistics was turned off by default. To enable the publication of statistics for integration nodes or servers that were created before V11.0.0.8, edit the relevant .conf.yaml file and activate the publicationOn and reportingOn properties, as required.

For more information, see Managing resource statistics collection and Configuring the collection of message flow statistics by using a .yaml configuration file.

UUIDs are not assigned to the integration node, integration server, application, or message flow components

In IBM App Connect Enterprise 11.0 and later, UUIDs are not assigned to the integration node, integration server, application, or message flow components. When these fields are displayed (in monitoring events, for example), they are set to all zeros.

For more information, see The monitoring event.

Message flow monitoring

Monitoring events are issued in a new format that provides additional information. However, the format that was used in IBM Integration Bus 10.0 can also be used in IBM App Connect Enterprise 12.0 by editing the eventFormat property in the Monitoring.MessageFlow section of the .conf.yaml file.

For more information, see Activating monitoring.

LDAP authentication and local passwords

If a web user account has a local password, and LDAP authentication is enabled, the local password is ignored. When LDAP authentication is enabled, all web user logins must be authenticated by using LDAP. Any local passwords are ignored. For more information, see Enabling LDAP authentication and mqsiwebuseradmin command - Windows, Linux, and AIX systems.

HTTPConnector and HTTPSConnector policies

HTTPConnector and HTTPSConnector policies were deprecated in IBM App Connect Enterprise 11.0 Fix Pack 5 and are not supported in IBM App Connect Enterprise 12.0. If you try to deploy one of these policy types in IBM App Connect Enterprise 12.0, you see an error and the policies are not loaded or used. Instead, configure the HTTPConnector or HTTPSConnector Resource Manager section of the server.conf.yaml file.

TLS functionality change

IBM App Connect Enterprise uses OpenSSL and Java Secure Socket Extension (JSSE) for securing connectivity over HTTP, SOAP, and REST. The integration node HTTP listener and the embedded listener in integration servers use OpenSSL for inbound (server) connections. The HTTPRequest node and SOAPRequest node use JSSE for outbound (client) connections.

Classes provided by the JDBC type 4 driver

To access classes provided by the JDBC type 4 driver inside a JavaCompute node in a message flow, you must leave jarsURL blank in the appropriate JDBCProvider policy, and ensure that you place the JDBC driver JAR files in the appropriate shared-classes folder; for further information, see Java shared classloader.