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Recommended approach

  • 23 December 2019
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Userlevel 1
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Hi!

A different project within the organization is implementing Applications 10 (A10), an engagement which involves both an upgrade (from v8), reimplementation of some features and utilization of new features. That implementation project is pressed for time and has little capacity to help others.

While I am on a different project that is supposed to consume Asset and Resource data from IFS and then write back status updates (e.g. equipment shutdown/upgrades with according workforce reservations during planned periods). We are on a different schedule and will have to specify high-level design BEFORE the other project are ready to contribute much. Our integration this shall happen programatically, i.e. via application-to-application/machine-to-machine (A2A/M2M), e.g. via API/ReST/JSON pattern. 

Now my question is this: Where do I look to learn more about recommended approaches/discussions of design choices, please?

Bst rgds from André T.  

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Best answer by jhooperyan 7 February 2020, 18:54

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Userlevel 7
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You might consider requesting access to an IFS RACE environment, then develop your Apps 10 solution against that. That will get you closer than developing against your old Apps 8 environment, since the application connectivity changes drastically between these versions.

 

(This is assuming you don’t need to report against customized or configured data.)

Userlevel 1
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Hi Kevin, thanks for your response! That could be a good idea, but would you be so kind and provide a little more information (indicative/lead) about the RACE environment, please?

Userlevel 6
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Unless something changes recently, Apps10 Race environments are hosted, i.e. not something you install yourself. 

You would need to contact IFS to request one to be setup/made available to you.  I would start with your company’s IFS customer partner (whoever that is) who should be able to help you.  You could alternatively put in a request to IFS Support and they can likely assist.

Nick

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Thanks to you too, Nick!

Even though it’s good to be aware that such features exist, our temporary conclusion is that an environment which doesn’t involve/allow custom data would be of limited value to us.

Subsequently we’re back at where this thread started: Even though we (or rather ‘that other’/the main implementation project) have hooked up with a couple of local/national/regional SIs (System Integrators) who BTW involve skilled former IFS employees, we quickly end up in a fragile situation where we have too few personnel with sufficient insight into the sometimes 2nd or 3rd level implications of design choices available to our team, i.e. a significant project (possibly even enterprise) risk.

The fact that IFS has moved onto a more open ReST API-centric path helps a lot, but we don’t see the scarcity of competencies vanish anytime soon.

My two cents of personal opinion says that even though IFS invests in their ‘Aurena’ client, a Swagger-like kind of API documentation would help A LOT when customers like ourselves need to expose features/datasets from within IFS A10 over to other systems in an application-to-application (A2A) fashion – not just purposed for use case scenarios where there are human eyeballs involved. Along with artefacts such as the underlying data model being made available to this community. So far I haven’t found any of that, and thus keep stumbling around.

/A.

Userlevel 6
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“My two cents of personal opinion says that even though IFS invests in their ‘Aurena’ client, a Swagger-like kind of API documentation would help A LOT when customers like ourselves need to expose features/datasets from within IFS A10 over to other systems in an application-to-application (A2A) fashion – not just purposed for use case scenarios where there are human eyeballs involved. Along with artefacts such as the underlying data model being made available to this community. So far I haven’t found any of that, and thus keep stumbling around.”

I agree.  From last year’s World Conference it looks like making APIs better available for a2a is something they are moving into quickly, but I don’t know where the documentation for this resides today (if anywhere).  My guess is that they will have something available sooner rather than later because it will be needed for the approach to succeed, but who knows what timeframe that might be?

Nick

Userlevel 5
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Check out the session “Extend your solution:  On the inside using layers, and on the outside using RESTful APIs” from the 2019 World Conference.  You can find it here.  https://www.ifs.com/corp/news-and-events/events/world-conference-2019/content/platform/

 

Also - a RACE environment is a working IFS environment that is already configured and running - to eliminate the work of starting from scratch. But once it’s running, you can do what you want. I used one to start our research and design work in Apps10 before our first uplift was complete.  

Userlevel 1
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I THANK you Jeannine,

This served as a quite useful confirmation. We’ve been hoping for/expecting a direction like this, but so far haven’t come across too much «proof» or validation. Membership in the OpenAPI Initiative is precisely the kind of stuff we’d like to see! :-)

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