Using WebAPIs with IMan
Realisable IMan can interact with Web APIs with its new WEBAPI module starting in version 5. This allows us to host a web API within an existing integration.
Prior to this point, IMan has been the active component in any integration. For example, when you run an integration, IMan does the work of reading the file, querying the database, and doing the data manipulation that’s required. With this change, we an use IMan to wait for the API to make a request first.
New module: WEBAPI
This new module allows us to host a web API within IMan.
This means that customers can host their own APIs. There are a variety of scenarios you may picture:
- Receive POs
- Receive Invoices from external organization
- Listen to account update requests from different places
- Receive inventory updates from eCommerce platforms
This allows us to have greater reach with what your integrations can do, acting as an endpoint for a broader process orchestration.
We could host an integration within IMan with a web API endpoint. Then internal or external solutions can call into that endpoint to initiate a complex IMAN workflow.
We may also configure user authentication, OR allow anonymous requests.
Performance enhancements
The experience of building integrations will also be quicker. The developers invested significant time making IMAN performance better so that the software can meet the requirements of working in a web API context.
Usability enhancements
With this release, IMan now allows the person building the integration to incorporate “reader” objects at multiple points within a transformation. Previously, a reader could only be used as a starting point in an integration. This is incredibly useful because it allows us to take data such as that provided through a Web API endpoint, and follow it up with a JSON reader or a database reader. The new “reader” capabilities also include the ability to parameterize the statement. That way, we can pass through a variable that originates within the data set. I
Finally, everything is backwards-compatible. And any existing integration can be converted to use an API.
