Within, you will explore a series of hands-on labs designed to give you a high-level understanding of the IBM API Connect solution.

The labs will explore a fictional company called ThinkIBM, which sells rare historical IBM machinery. ThinkIBM wants to provide easier access to their inventory database through a collection of APIs.

Throughout the labs, you will take on the role of four key persona’s:

API Developer API Product Manager API Administrator API Consumer

Each section of the guide will identify the persona with which the next few steps relate to, as well as a summary of the tasks you will perform.

Keep an eye out for the tooltips below. These will help guide you through common mistakes, provide tips and helpful context to the task at hand.

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The environment that you will be working in today utilizes IBM’s Bluemix Cloud to host your API Connect service, as well as back-end sample services and a microservice which you will create.

While the main components of the environment are cloud-based, the labs are designed to also make use of the API Connect Developer Toolkit - an application which runs locally on each developer’s workstation that provides API design and deploy functionality.

If you are participating in a scheduled Proof of Technology on an IBM-provided system, the prerequisite components have already been installed for you, so please proceed to the Bluemix Account Setup section.

However, if you are exploring these labs on from your own workstation, you will need to install the Developer Toolkit and it’s required components by following the Environment Setup instructions.