Future IBM support to SPARK UI Toolkit to System Data migration

Saroj Panda

January 27, 2017 at 1:56 am #3591

Hi,
We are fully working with Spark components and want to know what will be the impact when IBM integrates the Spark Toolkit in it’s System Data toolkit
As currently all the components we are using are referring to Spark UI Toolkit. We are wondering how much effort it will be to move from spark toolkit to system data in future.

Regards,
Saroj

Matthew Oatts

January 27, 2017 at 2:11 pm #3601

Hi Saroj,

Great question!

By working with the SPARK UI toolkit now, you are positioning your company on the easiest migration path possible: upgrading your UI will just be a dependency upgrade to a new built-in toolkit of IBM BPM.

How:

Salient Process engineers and IBM BPM engineers have been working together since the SPARK + IBM BPM deal was announced last June to build SPARK into IBM BPM. In fact, releases for both SPARK and IBM BPM have already started to embed shared functionality. This means that when SPARK is fully incorporated into IBM BPM, it will be the same underlying code base as you are using right now.

What exactly happens when SPARK UI gets “built into IBM BPM”?:

There will be a new toolkit that includes all the SPARK UI controls that will be packaged with the IBM BPM platform once it’s “built in.” So it won’t be part of the System Data Toolkit or any other existing toolkit. However, it will be the same underlying toolkit as SPARK today (probably with a name change). That means you’ll see a “new snapshot” available in all your apps next to the SPARK toolkit dependency. You’ll just upgrade to the snapshot that’s came with your IBM BPM update and it will work!

It’s also worth noting that at that time, you will no longer be required to pay for a SPARK support subscription. That’s because you’ll be using a version of “SPARK” that’s part of the IBM BPM product now and not a download from Salient. Keep in mind though, if you have other environments where you don’t upgrade to the new IBM BPM version, you’ll still need a SPARK subscription with us.

I hope that answers your question!

-Matthew Oatts, Product Manager, Salient Process

Saroj Panda

January 31, 2017 at 12:22 am #3609

Thank you Matthew for explaining the migration procedure in detail. Now I’m assured that it will not be much of work to resolve the dependencies to SPARK components.

But interestingly then IBM will be managing 3 core toolkits, System Data, Responsive Coaches and Spark UI 🙂

 

Regards,

Saroj

Binary

February 2, 2017 at 7:58 am #3619

Do we need to update 8.5.7 or do we need to upgrade to 8.5.8 in order to get the integrated tool kit?

SPARK Support

February 2, 2017 at 1:27 pm #3621

Hi Binary,

This will be determined by IBM at a later time.

Regards,

Stephen P.