Nordic Institute for Interoperability Solutions (NIIS) has on 30th April 2019 released version 6.21.0 of X-Road data exchange layer that provides support for consuming and producing both SOAP and REST services. From now on REST-based information systems can be integrated to X-Road without technical changes and an additional adapter service component.
Adding support for REST does not mean dropping support for SOAP from X-Road. No changes are required to information systems consuming and producing SOAP services via X-Road. Instead, the architectural styles can co-exist side by side which means that all existing SOAP services are supported in the future as well.
"REST support has been requested by X-Road user organisations in Estonia and Finland for some time already, and we're glad to be able to provide it to them now. User organisations have commented REST protocol's draft versions and participated in design workshops related to the implementation over the last year. This is the most significant change in X-Road core since the release of version 6 in 2015", says Petteri Kivimäki, CTO of NIIS.
Another major improvement in the new X-Road core version is streamlined onboarding process of new X-Road member organisations and information systems. The streamlined onboarding process speeds up registration and reduces daily management tasks of X-Road operators.
X-Road data exchange layer software is released under the MIT open source license and is available free of charge for any individual or organization.