DataPower XC 10 seamless integration with DataPower XI 52

The need for cache is inevitable in the world of enterprise-level applications. There are boundless use cases with different combinations ranging from the data type specific cache to application specific cache. We have seen a wide variety of caching technology realizations from emerging technologies like Redis (in reality, it is more than a cache) to time-proven, simple DynaCache, which serves our purpose of caching at different levels.

IBM offers mainly two solutions for cache:

1. IBM WebSphere DataPower XC10 Appliance
2. WebSphere eXtreme Scale.

XC 10 can be considered a simplified version of the eXtreme scale, which can be used for HTTP session management, extension of DynaCache and also as a side cache for memory-intensive applications like IBM WebSphere Portal.

I was inspired by our recent successful implementation of DataPower XC 10 with DataPower XI 52 and WebSphere Portal for one of my clients, where the use case was to cache huge data objects ranging from 2 MB to 30 MB. We designed a tutorial to help with complete end-to-end to setup and implemented a use case to experience the power and ease of setup of XC 10 device.

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In the tutorial, our use case will be to setup cache for a service that will connect to “OPEN WEATHER MAP API” (http://openweathermap.org/API ) to get the weather for a given city and we will cache the responses from the service. Even though this scenario might not be the appropriate caching scenario, we will use it for simple demonstration purposes.

With the introduction of firmware V 6.0 for the XI 52, the integration between XI 52 and XC 10 has become seamless. We can get the integration set up and working in a hour. In the tutorial, we will show the setup of DataPower XC10 seamless integration with XI 52. The below diagram shows the high level setup overview where XI52 will connect to open weather map API.

You can download the tutorial here XC10IntegrationWithXI52.

Please leave your comments or questions regarding the setup below.

References

1. Enterprise Caching Solutions using IBM WebSphere DataPower SOA Appliances and IBM WebSphere eXtreme Scale http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg248043.html