Swagger, MultiValue, & Modernization - Top 10 Things the MultiValue Community Needs to Know

April 25, 2018

1. The Swagger Specification has moved to the Linux Foundation and has been renamed The Open API Initiative. This initiative is backed by Google, Microsoft, Intuit, and many others.
2. The OpenAPI specification (formerly known as the Swagger Specification) is a powerful definition format to describe RESTful APIs. The specification creates a RESTful interface for easily developing and consuming an API by effectively mapping all the resources and operations associated with it.
3. Swagger is the world’s largest framework of API developer tools for the OpenAPI Specification, enabling development across the entire API lifecycle, from design and documentation, to test and deployment.
4. Since it’s both human and machine readable, any API (including REST) that adheres to the OpenAPI standard is easy to read, iterate and consume.
5. There are two main ways to take advantage of Swagger:
   • Top-down is when you use Swagger to design your API.
   • Bottom-up is when you use Swagger to elevate an existing API.
6. The majority of MultiValue (MV) apps have run for many years before the internet existed, and do a great job of running your business. But, the needs of your customers, partners, and business users are different today than when your application was written. So, by integrating your data and application logic with web and mobile apps, you make all your users happy and more productive while minimizing risk and costs associated with modernization projects.
7. You can leverage Swagger tooling to reveal and re-purpose (or elevate) your MV application layer by simplifying the process of getting your MV data out of your application and into Rocket API. Here are three examples:
   • If you have adopted existing API services (REST), you can then define your APIs in the “Open API Specification Standard”. Rocket API, a powerful tool for modernizing your existing application layer and file structures, can then harness these redefined documents in any number of modernization strategies.
   • Or you could take an existing subroutine and run it through a filter to generate an OpenAPI definition of the subroutine. Then, you could also extend this to create the RESTful service of the subroutine.
   • You could also take a simple dictionary and produce an OpenAPI definition reference of the items in the dictionary.
8. This is where Rocket API enters the story. Rocket API lets you make not only data but also logic available via high-performance APIs. With Rocket API, you:
   – Capture the display logic and serve it up for other apps to call and use as microservices
   – Don’t need to refactor any existing MV code
   – Benefit from web and mobile work flows that match your business work flows
   – Take advantage of today’s API economy

9. Here’s the takeaway. Swagger documents, which contain definitions of MV application instances, offer the opportunity to elevate and modernize your rock-solid, host-based MV application by simplifying the process of getting your MV data out of your application and into Rocket API. Then, you can use Rocket API to modernize your MV app without making code changes to your MV app.
10. Of course, all of this is only possible thanks to the fact that we offer Web Services including RESTful, Rocket Web DE, SOAP, etc. Over the years you have told us what you need to open your MV applications to the outside world. While you have been able to do that, now you can also leverage your existing MV assets into today’s API economy easily with Rocket API and Swagger. Learn more about Rocket API!

Interesting side bar. The four Rocketeers who contributed to this post (Nik Kesic, Gary Gregory, Larry Schoenleber, Mike Rajkowski) are participating in our internal “hack-a-thon,” called Rocket.Build, in June. Their project has three phases:

1. Automate the creation of RESTful services from MVBASIC subroutines.
2. Define the services in Swagger*.
3. Consume the services in Rocket API.

Tune back in during summer to see how our Rocket.Build project went and for updates to this blog and other ways to make the most of your MV assets using Rocket Software!

* The team is using Swagger 2.0 and will be moving to OpenAPI 3.0 when there is general acceptance by the API community.