IBrix no longer supported?? Help!!

Hello community. Long time no seen. I’m back to posting on my blog to address a recurring question I’m receiving from various colleagues, customers, and partners around the globe, asking me about alternatives to IBrix now that IBrix is no longer supported since Infor M3 version 13.1 that was released in May.

The IBrix Programming Model (IPM) was a pretty advanced in-house technology in ~2001 based on a mix of server-side code (M3 API/LWS), middleware code (Servlets/JSP in WebSphere), and client-side code (XML/XSLT/HTML/CSS/JavaScript). Now that IPM is no longer supported, my recommended solution is to call M3 API and Lawson Web Services and render a user interface from the client-side using JavaScript frameworks. I wrote a sample to call M3 API with jQuery DataTables and Jessica wrote How to call an M3 Web Service using jQuery. Those are by far the easiest solutions I’ve found. An alternative is to write server-side code for example in ASP.NET and C#, and those are valid solutions as well.

Each solution has advantages and disadvantages with criteria based on architecture, programming preference, maintenance, etc. I don’t see performance being a problem either way. Also, the JavaScript frameworks are now pretty powerful in terms of multi-device-browser-version support. And the graphical components offer solutions for server-side sorting and pagination. The only caveat with client-side programming is not being able to maintain a session on the server, and needing to deal with that. Let me know if you have other criteria in mind. This post is more like a brainstorming of ideas. I’m eager to read your comments.

I will soon post an example using the Dojo Toolkit.