DataPower Journey part 1 — First Steps

I started my DataPower journey at a project in my new job.

I have received a challenge: understand DataPower and implement an integration between SOAP services and REST services over JSON as a Multi-Protocol Gateway.

During all my life I had worked with Oracle solutions such Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle Service Bus, I was changing to Blues for the first time.

I am not intent focus on comparisons between Oracle and IBM. My main objective is my first impressions, problems and learning curve.

So first of all, what is DataPower?

According to IBM,

IBM® DataPower® Gateway is a single multi-channel gateway that helps provide security, control, integration and optimized access to a full range of mobile, web, application programming interface (API), service-oriented architecture (SOA), B2B and cloud workloads. It enables you to rapidly expand the scope of valuable IT assets to new channels — giving customers, employees and partners access to critical resources. It is available in the following form factors: physical, virtual, cloud, Linux* and Docker.

More information can be found here.

My other problem was obtained permission to use DataPower in my company. How to be familiar with a thing without permission? How to understand a thing without understanding its process? How about the config and installation steps?

However, at the end of the tunnel, a light shone…

and its name was Docker…

To be continue…