Use BotKit Middleware to create Watson-powered database interface

Chatbot anyone?

Few months back, I introduced you to a tutorial for a database-drive Slackbot. In the tutorial I used the Conversation connector to hook up IBM Watson Assistant to Slack as a chatbot. Did you know that you can reuse the code and utilize BotKit and IBM Watson BotKit Middleware to implement a Db2 interface via Slack, Facebook Messenger, Cisco Webex Teams and others?



If you followed the IBM Cloud tutorial, you know how Watson Assistant interacts with Db2. In the BotKit approach, the Conversation connector as the connection between Watson Assistant and Slack (or any other messaging platform) is now replaced with BotKit. The latter is a full Node.js appplication and requires hosting. In the tutorial I had used IBM Cloud Functions, a serverless and event-driven option. How do you get started with BotKit? Follow these two videos. The first introduces you to how setup Watson Assistant with BotKit:

The second video shows how to host the BotKit app on IBM Cloud:

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