The integration of mainframe applications and events with the Web has been speeded up with the release of two new products from Sybase.
The XJS/390 Enterprise Integrator and Mainframe Event Adapter are designed to lower the cost of conducting business on the Web and allow businesses to leverage and re-use existing investments in technology. The two products are fully compatible with Sybase Enterprise Portal and form part of a framework to integrate enterprise applications and data with the Web.
Rudie Bronkhorst, Sybase SA middleware product manager, says: "The products are best suited to enterprise-level, high-end, mainframe customers specifically those with lots of legacy systems - so they can take these to the Web, without needing to change any code. We guarantee 80% integration."
XJS/390 makes it quick and easy for developers to develop and execute programs that search, update, and retrieve information from the mainframe, including DB2 data, VSAM files, IMS/DB data and MQSeries data queues. It can also execute CICS applications and Sybase Open Server Connect RPC calls. XJS/390 can be used to join data from mainframe databases and files to form a single result set before it is returned. This can be done using XML or MScript (a JavaScript-based language).
These new applications can be built in a friendly environment running on Windows NT or Sun Solaris. Using this tool, they can create applications in Mscript that read and write to mainframe data sources and transactions.
The XJS/390 Enterprise Integrator provides classes to interface XML and Mscript to DB2, VSAM and IBM MQSeries data queues. It also includes a class to access CICS transactions written in Cobol or other languages.
Bronkhorst says XJS/390 does away with "screen scraping", the method of displaying the character based 3270 screens, cutting the data from them, and redisplaying them in a GUI or Web application. "Screen scraping has never been proven to be a good solution unless you only want to display the identical CICS 3270 windows in a Web browser. Typically you have to scrape data off of many screens to make one decent GUI/Web window and this process is very slow.
With XJS/390, using the record layout, the Web programmer can use Mscript in a few minutes to retrieve data from files that were previously inaccessible to him. If data is needed from multiple files, it can be mixed together to form one result set before it is returned. Mscript is a programming language so there is very little the Web programmer cannot do. We provide host objects that wrap the CICS, VSAM, MQ and DB2 APIs so that the Web programmer does not have to learn these complicated mainframe APIs."
He says the Web programmer can use the same record layout for data in XML, to retrieve information from files in a similar manner. "A Web programmer simply adds an XML process instruction (PI) specific to the OS/390 platform and sends the document to the mainframe. The mainframe XML engine completes the document and returns it to the client. This can then be used in a Web browser to extend e-commerce, mobile commerce and B2B applications to interact with mainframe processes and data. Sybase provides PIs for VSAM and CICS and a DB2 PI is being developed."
Supported platforms include IBM CICS/ESA and IBM CICS Transaction Server. Development tools and LAN runtime components support both Windows NT and Sun Solaris. Sybase plans to extend these solutions to IMS and native MVS, says Bronkhorst.
Mainframe Event Adapter extends the Rep Agent capability and can send XML mainframe DB2 events to Web platforms, he says. There are plans to add events from other mainframe sources.
This tool provides integration of existing mainframe business applications and other enterprise applications without changing the existing code. By proactively starting or participating in an online e-business process, it can help integrate applications or databases across distributed enterprises. For example, an existing mainframe-based order fulfilment system can be extended to transparently deliver shipment confirmations to the company's customers via a Website without changing the mainframe-based applications.
It extends existing DB2 applications by detecting changes to such data. By transparently tracking updates, inserts and deletes in DB2/MVS, Mainframe Event Adapter generates events from defined changes to data, and sends event notification to other systems.
Its Java-based graphical user interface event definition tool helps users define business events of interest. Once defined, it detects these as they occur, adds relevant data from DB2 and other sources, and publishes the event as an XML-formatted message to an IBM MQSeries queue.
It is available for the OS/390 operating system with support for DB2 and MQSeries OS/390. Event definition tools are available for Windows NT and the Sun Solaris Java Runtime Environment.
The two products, priced from $77 000 each, are obtainable either as options to Sybase Enterprise Portal or as stand-alone products.
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