IBM i Business Logic API with Mule
Overview
Unlocking IBM i business logic and data is a priority for many companies. There is a number of IBM i (AS400, iSeries) tools and technologies that can be used to expose existing back-end programs as APIs. In this post we will use Mulesoft Anypoint integration platform and Infoview Web Transaction Framework to create a RESTful API that calls RPG program. This is a continuation of IBM i (AS400, iSeries) integration with Mulesoft Anypoint series. Previous articles can be found here:
IBM i integration use cases
Building IBM i Data API with Mule
In the previous post we created Mule API that retrieves IBM i business data directly from DB2 for i database. The approach works great for simple data structures and normalized models. In most legacy applications, however, the stored data must first be processed through a complex business logic, which is typically a part of the existing back-end system, for example RPG program. API implementation must execute the business logic programs and handle the request / response data mapping.