IBM Middleware API Adopted By Standards Group

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August 20, 1999 (4:08 PM EDT)

IBM Middleware API Adopted By Standards Group

By Ellis Booker,

A high-level messaging interface from IBM is being adopted by an industry group as part of its own enterprise application integration standard.

On Monday, the Open Applications Group (OAGI) will announce approval of IBM's Application Messaging Interface (AMI) for its own Open Applications Group Middleware API Specification (OAGMAS).

"The idea is either an application software vendor or an end-user company can write to a common middleware API, but then use a variety of middleware for transport," said David Connelly, president and chief technology officer at OAGI. A reference implementation of the API is available at the group's website for free downloading.

Formed in 1995, OAGI's mission has been to create interoperability standards for enterprise software, such as ERP packages.

Like several other new industry consortia, OAGI is busy defining XML specs for e-commerce and business process integration. In the case of the OAGI's Business Object Document (BOD), XML will define common ways for disparate applications to share data. IBM's AMI will become the high-level interface for controlling how BOD documents are transferred with message-queuing middleware.

IBM originally introduced AMI in June as part of a slew of announcements around its own enterprise messaging flagship product, MQSeries.

So far, only IBM has plans to support AMI. But IBM officials said they were hopeful their API, with the endorsement of OAGI, would see broader adoption.

"It means customers or others who write to this API can future-proof [their applications], and gain portability and flexibility to other environments," said Alan Everard, IBM's MQSeries business manager.

Back in June, IBM said its AMI would simplify how developers connect two or more applications, because the high-level API will shield them from the complexities of platforms and programming languages.

IBM said it plans to offer AMI on top of MQSeries for AIX, HP-Solaris, Windows 98, and Windows NT in the third quarter.