Integrating IBM-Jazz: Some Pain Some Gain

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Certain issues brings in a whole lot of frustration to the developers while integrating different products from different vendors. However it is generally expected that different vendors might implement different standards for certain thing. But one issue really gave me a good point to think about. Why products from same vendor implement different ways for same feature?

Probably I am keeping you away from the issue and that might be again frustrating.

But yes, try integrating IBM Rational Requirements Composer (RRC) and IBM Rational Asset Manager (RAM) at the same time, and the authentication techniques are quite away from each other. As both the products, RRC and RAM, are being taken under the same umbrella of IBM Jazz.Net, I was really expecting a smooth experience when I started integration of IBM Rational Asset Manager (RAM) after completing the integration with IBM Rational Requirement Composer (RRC). The authentication of the REST based API on IBM Rational Requirement Composer (RRC) need oAuth. I posted on this in detail here: http://www.geekays.net/post/2012/05/24/Integrating-IBM-Jazz-oAuth-for-OSLC-API.aspx. As usual, the product documentation from IBM lacks clarity and most of the time biased towards Java. Though the product documentation from IBM was bad and faced some hiccups initially due to lack of knowledge of oAuth, I was very happy after I did it. And with the same confidence, I headed towards IBM Rational Asset Manager (RAM).

As I started to uncover the OSLC based REST based API for IBM Rational Asset Manager (RAM), I started trying to look for the oAuth specific configurations like URIs for Request Token, Access Token etc. But the catalog on IBM Rational Asset Manager REST API was quite mum on this. I started posting on the Jazz Forum [https://jazz.net/forum/questions/79494/ram-oslc-rest-how-to-do-form-based-authentication; https://jazz.net/forum/questions/79461/ram-oslc-rest-am-i-authenticated and https://jazz.net/forum/questions/79770/ram-oslc-rest-basic-authentication-not-working-with-ram ]. Finally thanks to people on the forum and I found the way out.

I discovered that IBM Rational Asset Manager on OSLC REST API uses a basic authentication and provides cookies (Auth Cookies). Once I got those after playing it with the RESTClient in Firefox and Chrome with a mix of Fiddler, I could grab it and the rest is the begining of another part.

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