IBM MobileFirst Foundation v8 is now available. This release dramatically simplies the overall development of mobile apps – both hybrid and native, the server side infrastructure is easier to deploy and with full prodution support for MobileFirst Foundation on IBM Containers, a server can be up and running on IBM Bluemix within 10 minutes 🙂
In this blog post, I wanted to mention 3 new features that I believe will drive customers to adopt this new version and rapidly build great apps for their own employees and customers :-
1. Migration Tool: In MobileFirst Platform v8, there are a large number of changes to the supported API’s which means that existing mobile apps will potentially require some updates. To define what that means, IBM have a migration tool – you run this against your apps and a report shows what needs changing – works with Hybrid apps from MobileFirst 6.2 onwards. There is a very useful Migration Cookbook that I recommend you reading.
2. Updated Security Framework: As those using MobileFirst Platform v7.x will know, IBM has been moving towards the use and support for the OAuth standard, v8 cements this move. Virtually all features across the product now use OAuth 2 (Application Authenticity, Web App Security, Server Key Store etc.
3. No More .WAR Files: In MobileFirst Platform v8, you do not create .WAR files that contain server side runtime / configuraion information… you now use the operations console to upload your app’s server side configuration and maintain this. The concept of the MobileFirst project is now removed – giving you more freedom to choose your development tools and environment. For an overview of the new approach, follow this link.
David J Pearson: My Personal Blog 