Chapter 2. Fuse Online

Fuse Online provides a web browser interface that lets a business expert integrate two or more different applications or services without writing code. It also provides features that allow the addition of code if it is needed for complex use cases.

Fuse Online runs an integration on OpenShift as a Spring Boot application that uses Apache Camel.

2.1. About Fuse Online distributions

Fuse Online is Red Hat’s web-based integration platform. Syndesis is the open source project for Fuse Online. Fuse Online runs in these OpenShift environments:

Host Environment

Installation

OpenShift Dedicated

Red Hat installs and provisions Fuse Online on Red Hat infrastructure.

OpenShift Container Platform

Customer installs and manages.

2.2. New features in Fuse Online 7.10

Fuse Online 7.10 provides the following new features:

  • Support for connecting to Red Hat Managed Kafka

    To support connecting to Red Hat Managed Kafka, the Kafka Message Broker connector includes the following fields:

    • Security Protocol
    • SASL Mechanism
    • Username
    • Password
    • SASL Login Callback Handler Class

    • OAuth Token Endpoint URI

      For more information, see Chapter 15, "Connecting to Kafka" in Connecting Fuse Online to Applications and Services.

  • Integration labels

    When you save an integration, you can apply one or more labels to it. A label is a key-value pair tag that you can apply to an integration (or other OpenShift resource) for later filtering and selecting in OpenShift. For example, an OpenShift admin user can filter the list of running pods or deployments by label.

  • Integration environment variables

    Optionally, when you save an integration, you can set one or more environment variables that Fuse Online applies to the integration Pod. You can use these environment variables to set Spring Boot configuration options, for example, to set SERVER_MAX_HTTP_HEADER_SIZE. Existing environment variables set manually are preserved.

    Note that setting these environment variables in Fuse Online when you save an integration does not change or impact any other environment settings set manually, for example, through the OpenShift web console interface.

  • Maven mirror setting

    You can specify the Maven repository that you want Fuse Online to use for accessing Maven artifacts when it builds integrations. In the Syndesis custom resource, specify the Maven repository as the value of the components:server:features:maven:mirror setting.

2.3. Changes in Fuse Online 7.10

Fuse Online 7.10 changes Fuse Online 7.9 features as follows:

  • To enable the sample Postgres database, use the todo addon option

    In previous releases, if you want to include a sample database and sample database connector in your Fuse Online installation, set the demoData option in the Fuse Online custom resource. Starting with Fuse Online 7.10, you enable the sample database and connector by setting the todo addon option, which also includes the sample Todo app for testing integrations.

  • Kafka broker URIs are auto-discovered for AMQ Streams

    If you use AMQ Streams (API versions v1beta1 or v1beta2), when you create a new Kafka Message Broker connection in Fuse Online, the Kafka Broker URI is auto-discovered and shown in the Kafka Broker URI drop-down list.

  • Disconnected environment requires setting environment variables

    For Fuse Online to install and work in a disconnected environment, you must set the following environment variables to syndesis-oauthproxy:

    • HTTPS_PROXY
    • HTTP_PROXY
    • NO_PROXY

  • deployIntegrations flag no longer available

    The deployIntegrations option in the Fuse Online custom resource that controlled whether integrations were deployed has been removed.

2.4. Upgrading from Fuse Online 7.9.x to 7.10.x requires manual upgrade steps

If you installed Fuse Online 7.9.x and you want to upgrade to Fuse Online 7.10.x, you must first manually upgrade to Fuse Online 7.10.0.

  1. In the Administrator perspective of the OpenShift Container Platform web console, navigate to Operators > Installed Operators.
  2. Click the Red Hat Integration Fuse Online 7.9.3 Operator.
  3. Click the Subscription tab.

  4. Verify that Update approval is set to Manual:

    • If Update approval is set to Manual, skip to the next step.

    • If Update approval is set to Automatic:

      1. Click Automatic.
      2. In the Change Update Approval Strategy dialog, select Manual and then click Save.
  5. Under Update channel, click 7.9.3.

  6. For the Change subscription update channel, select 7.10.x.

    Note: The latest, candidate, and stable channels are Technology Preview features.

  7. Under Upgrade status, click Upgrade available.
  8. Click Preview InstallPlan and then Approve.

  9. Verify that the operator has fully completed the upgrade to Fuse Online 7.10.0:

    1. Navigate to the Operators > Installed Operators page and then click Red Hat Integration Fuse Online. The Operator Details page opens.
    2. Select the Sydnesis tab. The status for the Fuse Online instance (the default name is app) initially shows Installed (to indicate that Fuse Online 7.9.3 is installed). It then progresses through several phases (Installing, Starting, and Installed). When it reaches the Installed phase again, the upgrade to 7.10.0 is complete.
  10. Navigate back to the Operators > Installed Operators page, and then click Upgrade available for the Red Hat Integration Fuse Online operator.
  11. Click Preview InstallPlan and then Approve.

  12. Verify that the operator has fully completed the upgrade to Fuse Online 7.10.x:

    1. Navigate to Networking > Routes and then click on the location link for syndesis to open the Fuse Online web console.
    2. In the upper right corner of the Fuse Online console, click the ? icon and then select About.
    3. Verify that the About page includes 7_10_x in the version number.

2.5. Upgrading Fuse Online integrations

To upgrade a Fuse Online environment that is running on OCP on-site, you must update Fuse Online by using the operator and then republish any running integrations as described in Upgrading Fuse Online.

On OCP 4.9, when you upgrade to 7.10 by using the operator, the following warning is displayed during the Fuse Online Operator upgrade process:

W1219 18:38:58.064578 1 warnings.go:70] extensions/v1beta1 Ingress is deprecated in v1.14+, unavailable in v1.22+; use networking.k8s.io/v1 Ingress

This warning appears because clients (that Fuse Online uses for the Kubernetes/OpenShift API initialization code) access a deprecated Ingress version. This warning is not an indicator of complete use of deprecated APIs and there is no issue with upgrading to Fuse Online 7.10.

2.6. Important notes for Fuse Online

Important notes for the Fuse 7.10 release of the Fuse Online distribution:

  • Fuse Online no longer supports Camel K runtime or the KNative connector.
  • When Fuse Online is installed and provisioned on Red Hat infrastructure, the account is limited to a specific number of integrations that can be running at one time. For details, see the pricing plan.
  • An OpenAPI schema that you upload to Fuse Online might not define input/output types. When Fuse Online creates a custom API client from an OpenAPI schema that does not specify input/output types then it is not possible to create an integration that maps integration data to fields that the API client can process or from fields that the API client processed. If an integration requires data mapping to or from a custom API, then when you upload the OpenAPI schema, click Review/Edit to open API Designer, which is an API editing tool, and add input/output type specifications.
  • Since Fuse 7.8, an OpenAPI document that you use for a custom API client connector or for an API provider integration cannot have cyclic schema references. For example, a JSON schema that specifies a request or response body cannot reference itself as a whole nor reference any part of itself through any number of intermediate schemas.

  • On OCP 4.9 (or later), the application-monitoring project no longer works. It is a prerequisite for monitoring Fuse Online integrations and infrastructure components with Prometheus and Grafana.

    To work around this issue, you can use the built-in monitoring stack (in the openshift-monitoring namespace) to use the openshift-user-workload-monitoring feature and the grafana-operator to use the ops addon as described in the following Adding Fuse Online monitoring resources (Prometheus and Grafana) on OCP 4.9 (or later) procedure.

2.7. Obtaining technical support for Fuse Online

To obtain technical support, in the Fuse Online console, in the left navigation panel, click Support. Use the Support page to download diagnostic information for all integrations or for one or more integrations that you choose. The page also provides a link for opening a support ticket and providing the diagnostic information that you downloaded.

2.8. Technology Preview features in Fuse Online

This release includes the Technology Preview features that are listed below.

Important

Technology Preview features are not supported with Red Hat production service level agreements (SLAs), might not be functionally complete, and Red Hat does not recommend using them in production. These features provide early access to upcoming product features, enabling customers to test functionality and provide feedback during the development process. For more information, see Red Hat Technology Preview features support scope.

  • Data Mapper supports CSV data

    For any Fuse Online connector that has an action for which you can define a data shape, you now have the option to specify a CSV instance (in addition to the options to specify JSON schema, JSON instance, XML schema, or XML instance). For example, in a Webhook connection, you can specify a CSV file as a data output type for an action.

  • Fuse Online auditing

    Fuse Online supports basic auditing for changes made by any user to the following Fuse Online components:

    • Connections - The Name and any other fields shown on the connector’s Details page in the Fuse Online web console.
    • Connectors - The Name field.
    • Integrations - The Name field.

  • Conditional expressions for mapping data fields

    In the data mapper, you can specify a conditional expression and apply it to a data mapping. For example, a conditional expression can specify evaluation of a source field and how to populate the target field if the source field is empty. The limited set of expressions that you can specify are similar to Microsoft Excel expressions.

  • Document scope for user-defined properties in data mapper

    In the data mapper, you can specify a scope for properties that you define for source and target mappings. In the Mapping Details panel, click Add (+) next to Properties. In the Create Property dialog. for the new Scope option, you can select the current message header, a message header from a previous step, or Camel Exchange Property for Camel-specific properties.

  • For a REST API client that uses OAuth, when you create an API client connector, you can change the default OAuth2 behavior of connections that you create from that connector. Fuse Online vendor extensions to the OpenAPI specification support the following:

    • Providing client credentials as parameters.
    • Obtaining a new access token based on HTTP response status codes.