Migrating from Earlier Releases

Overview

Persistent Mobile Foundation v9.0 comprises of many concepts for application development and deployment, and some API changes. Learn about these changes to prepare and plan for the migration of your Mobile Foundation applications. The purpose of this tutorial is to provide a clear and simple view of the migration steps for applications and adapters from IBM MobileFirst Platform v8.0 (including its fixpacks) to Persistent Mobile Foundation 9.0.

The migration process guides you through the steps to transform classic hybrid applications into standard Cordova applications, and to update the PMF SDK in native applications. Mobile Web apps are handled, too. Adapters are migrated into Maven projects, and implementation concepts such as the PMF security framework, push notifications, and direct update are further clarified. Follow this tutorial for a full-fledged migration to Persistent Mobile Foundation v9.0. Post migration you will have an app that is fully compatible with all of PMF 9.0 features and functions.

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Why migrate to Persistent Mobile Foundation 9.0

Reduce Effort, Skill and Time Required to Build Apps

  • Build apps faster, simpler and smarter with standard package managers (npm, CocoaPods, Gradle, NuGet) and Maven for Java Adapter build automation
  • Its simpler, modular, and easier to plug-in Mobile Foundation SDKs
  • Improved overall user experience including anticipating users’ next best action and providing guided help throughout for registering, configuring and deploying apps

Enhanced Automation, Dev and IT Self-Service

  • Live Update feature to externalize and dynamically change app configurable information (Push Notifications, Authentication, Adapters, App behavior and workflow)
  • A user friendly Console experience for registering, deploying and managing apps
  • A Simple architecture that eliminates the need for Dev and IT interdependence
  • Features like crash analytics, configurable alerts, and root cause analysis
  • Push Notifications services enables targeted, subscription-based notifications sent from web console

Multi-channel API creation and management

  • Step up API Connect multichannel security with mobile specific security extensions (e.g. Step Up, Multifactor) for maximum protection, then enforce in the DMZ with IBM DataPower
  • Create and define API Connect-compatible Swagger REST APIs in Foundation v8 then Manage and Secure them in API Connect

Migrating existing applications to PMF SDKs

You can add support to your existing applications for the Persistent Mobile Foundation 9.0 features by adding the PMF SDK plug-ins to your app.

Migrating adapters and security

Basically, we know adapters are Maven projects. The PMF security framework is based on OAuth, security scopes, and security checks. Security scopes define the security requirements to access a resource. Security checks define how a security requirement is verified. Security checks are written as Java adapters. For a hands-on experience with adapters and security, see the tutorials for Creating Java and JavaScript Adapters and Authorization concepts.

PMF operates only in session-independent mode and adapters should not store a state locally to a Java virtual machine (JVM). You can externalize adapter properties to configure adapters for the context where they run, for example a test server or a production server. You can define them from the PMF Operations Console, or by using a command-line tool or the server REST API.

Migrating push notifications support

Push Notifications can also be migrated from earlier releases to PMF 9.0 easily. The push certificates are stored on the server. You can set them from the PMF Operations Console or you can automate certificate uploads by using a command-line tool or the push service REST API. You can also send push notifications from the PMF Operations Console. The push service is protected by the OAuth security model. You must configure server-side components that use the push service REST API must be configured as confidential clients of PMF.

Migration Scenarios and steps using Ant files

You can use Ant tasks to apply the fix pack or upgrade your existing IBM MobileFirst Platform 8.0 setup to Persistent Mobile Foundation 9.0.

Click on the link below for more information about the steps to be performed:

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