TriggerMesh Previews Integration Language Based on HCL

TriggerMesh has made available a preview of a TriggerMesh Integration Language (TIL) that makes it simpler to create and maintain integrations in Kubernetes environments by eliminating the need to rely on YAML files.

TIL provides access to a higher-level declarative language that provides an abstraction of Kubernetes object complexity based on the HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL). HCL was originally used to create the Terraform tool that many DevOps teams rely on to provision infrastructure-as-code (IaC).

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Mark Hinkle, CEO, TriggerMesh, says the TIL approach, in addition to making it simpler to build integrations, also makes it easier to reuse integrations that can now be stored and shared via a Git repository. In effect, each IT organization should be able to create and maintain its own ecosystem of integrations, notes Hinkle.

TIL is initially accessible via the 1.4 release of the namesake TriggerMesh platform for building event-driven application integrations using multiple serverless computing frameworks, including Lambda from Amazon Web Services (AWS) that is deployed on a Kubernetes cluster. The latest version adds support for a wide range of AWS data sources as well as support for a variety of data sources from Google and the CockroachDB database from Cockroach Labs.

Most IT teams don’t need deep understanding of how Kubernetes works to take advantage of the TriggerMesh platform, says Hinkle. TIL, in fact, will provide a layer of abstraction that makes integrations on top of Kubernetes plumbing, he adds.

Application integration is being transformed as microservices are more widely deployed across a distributed computing environment. Many of those microservices are driving interactions in near-real-time that requires microservices to dynamically spin up and down as required. Event-driven architectures enable those microservices to invoke, for example, compute resources via a serverless computing platform such as AWS Lambda.

Most IT organizations still approach integration as an afterthought once they build an application. However, a strong case can be made for standardizing on an integration framework around which applications are deployed. This approach makes them simpler to combine as required, especially since most new applications are being constructed using microservices that often span multiple clouds and on-premises IT environments.

There are, of course, no shortage of options when it comes to application integration frameworks. The challenge is finding a way to make application integration platforms accessible to all developers versus requiring a set of developer specialists to master all the nuances of a specific platform. Given the number of developers that are familiar with provisioning tools such as Terraform, an integration platform based on the same core syntax might have a lot of appeal.

Regardless of how integrations are achieved and maintained, there’s undoubtedly a lot of duplicated effort. Many development teams routinely create multiple identical integrations simply because they don’t know a similar integration already exists. As the number of integrations required by each development team rises in the age of microservices, it becomes more and more likely that developers will waste time building something that already exists without a way to see what’s readily available and approved for use.