It's a Wrap! POWERUp2022 is over, but the Zen at TekMonks Continues!

It's a Wrap! POWERUp2022 is over, but the Zen at TekMonks Continues!

The MonkBot and our Zen Booth decorations made it safely home from POWERUp 2022 in New Orleans, as did the TekMonks team!

POWERUp 2022 is the COMMON user group conference focused on the IBM i and IBM Power servers community. It was their first in-person conference post-pandemic and my first COMMON conference in several years. It was great to meet and greet in person after so many years.?

You have to admit, our CMO, Komal Dureja, did a great job of creating a Zen environment for TekMonks.??

Our inflatable MonkBot mascot drew attendees into our booth to relax with the TekMonks Zen in New Orleans!

TekMonks focused on IBM i Modernization with APIs and our API/400.?

Visitors to the booth and those attending my presentation on Wednesday ranged from large manufacturers to small finance companies.?

They appreciated the importance of APIs to unlock the value of their IBM i systems and the unique value API/400 could deliver for their environment.??

We did bring a bit of controversy over having "400" in our product name from the legacy AS/400.? However, many attendees liked the idea of us understanding the past to support their future with IBM i.

I wanted to share a summary of their top questions and our responses regarding API Modernization and TekMonks API/400 solution:

“What are the differences between native integration and screen scraping solutions for API creation?” ?The advantage of native integration for APIs is that we can access all of the business functionality of the programs, not just the information displayed on a native 5250 screen.? In the booth and presentation, we demonstrated an API that called a program on IBM i whose results were returned as an IBM i Message and not to the screen, which a screen scraping solution would miss, but not our API/400 solution with native integration.?

In addition, with native calls to IBM i programs and data, we are not using up sessions and interactive resources on the IBM i system.

“What is the difference between secured access to the APIs vs assuring security and access control of the APIs accessing the IBM i programs and resources?”??To secure access to the APIs on the API/400 appliance, we support API Keys, TLS support, and authentication to assure secured and trusted access to those APIs. In addition, API/400 utilizes an AE265 encrypted TCPIP tunnel to access IBM i resources along with necessary credentials to be authenticated with the IBM i system. This assures that the API is secure and the IBM i connection is highly secured.

The second part of this question deals with how the API user is authenticated with the IBM i, enabling IBM i to control access to its applications and information. API/400 authentication and management utilize JWT Tokens and the IBM i for authentication and resource control.

• Step 1: Have an authentication API that takes in the user ID and encrypted password. Have it authenticate the user against the IBM i and return an encrypted JWT token embedding this ID on success and no token on failure.
• Step 2: Secure APIs use this token and will then use object auth on the IBM i to ensure the returned data is readable by the user calling the API.

“How do I best leverage APIs to enable sharing of IBM i information with other systems within the company?”? This question focused on organizations that need easy access to business information managed and stored on the IBM i system, such as finance and operations needing to access IBM i information to help with forecasting.

Leveraging APIs standardizes access to particular functions and applications across the organization. This ensures a common approach to integrating the information and makes that application resources available to any application or platform. For example, an API checking inventory availability could be standardized for internal business management and a mobile application for sales teams, partners, and customers.

“Why is it better to run the API/400 Gateway external to the IBM i server vs. running on IBM i?”? Many tools from IBM and partners enable API access on the IBM i system. API/400 runs externally as a virtual appliance, and attendees were curious about that choice.?

TekMonks found there are several key advantages to running the API/400 externally to the IBM i system:

• It assures the APIs perform well and are secured for other applications and users while minimizing the impact and changes to the IBM i.??
• We assure that if the API is being overly utilized, we queue up the calls to the IBM i, ensuring minimal performance impact to the IBM i system.??
• We incorporate technology supporting node.js and javascript development, giving clients the ability to add additional business logic to their API tier giving API developers the ability to integrate other external APIs with those developed specifically to access the IBM i.

“Which open standards are most important when implementing an API modernization strategy?”??Open standards are critical for any API strategy, not just for those focused on IBM i modernization. The purpose of APIs is to enable developers to easily incorporate functionality into their applications by leveraging the APIs being created, including those accessing IBM i applications and resources. The best approach to help programmers of any programming language is to ensure APIs are built to support the OpenAPI standard and are Restful and built-in JSON. These standards utilize widely available skills, and the Open API standard makes it easy to understand and document how best for developers to access and test with the API.

“What should I consider on IBM i to ensure the best success with APIs and API/400?” The attendees understood what API/400 was bringing to the API access to IBM i requirements, but there were many discussions about what is needed on the IBM i.? Even though we require minimal changes and updates, we are looking to host a Lunch and Learn in the next few weeks to dig deeper into these requirements.

Lastly, I wanted to share my personal observations of attending POWERUp 2022 as someone who has attended other COMMON conferences over the years.

• People were happy to be at a convention, see colleagues, and learn about the new announcements and technologies.
• COMMON is as much a community as just a group of users, providing unique education and opportunities.
• It was exciting to see the highlights of IBM's recent announcements of IBM i 7.5 and Merlin.
• I attended the main tent, and IBM commented that IBM i is now the best performing OS on Power10 systems.?

Attending POWERUp 2022 was a great experience for the TekMonks team, and, as our CMO mentioned, she can't wait to see what our booth will look like in Denver in 2023.