HostBridge Process Automation
JavaScript-Based Web Services for Mainframe Integration
Using HostBridge Process Automation– HostBridge’s JavaScript-based mainframe web services facility – organizations can rapidly develop and deploy reusable web services from a wide range of mainframe applications and data resources.
As a mainframe-resident JavaScript facility, HostBridge Process Automation also offers a uniquely powerful and flexible solution to the toughest CICS integration challenge – orchestrating and integrating the transaction micro flows of CICS terminal-oriented applications.
Integrating CICS Transaction Micro Flows
Leveraging flexible, industry-standard ECMAScript/JavaScript, HostBridge Process Automation enables developers to orchestrate, automate, and integrate the most complex CICS transaction micro flows as a single web service.
Terminal-oriented CICS transaction processes commonly require interaction with dozens, if not hundreds of screens. Integrating these complex micro flows has been problematic. Users accessing early web-enabled CICS applications had to interact with CICS one screen/one transaction at a time. Similarly, distributed applications connected to the mainframe via middle-tier servers were limited to communicating with CICS on a transaction-by-transaction basis. Each interaction required a full request-response cycle and a full transit of the network, increasing process latency and impacting system performance.
HostBridge Process Automation handles transactions far more efficiently, effectively, and – in terms of system resources – economically. Accessing the mainframe via HostBridge Process Automation, distributed applications can now call a single service, invoking HostBridge Process Automation to complete the whole complex transaction sequence on the mainframe and then return a single response. The result is significantly higher system performance and a highly stable, reliable integration.
With HostBridge Process Automation automating CICS transaction processes, end-users enjoy a fast, familiar web experience when interacting with the mainframe, application and system interaction is streamlined for optimal performance, and legacy applications can more readily be integrated with AJAX and other new Web 2.0 technologies.
ECMAScript/JavaScript Scripting Facility
HostBridge Process Automation includes a development facility and runtime engine. With HostBridge Process Automation, application developers, process designers, and integration architects can use the industry-standard ECMAScript/JavaScript to write scripts that automate virtually any CICS transaction process, no matter the level of complexity.
Since JavaScript is the most widely used scripting language in the world, scripting with HostBridge Process Automation will be familiar to the vast majority of developers. And even non-mainframe developers find it easy to access data, run transactions, and execute CICS commands via single HTTP, SOAP, or MQ requests.
Eclipse-Based Integrated Development Environment
HostBridge Process Automation includes a workstation-based Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that makes it easy to develop, test, and deploy process orchestration/automation scripts. The IDE, an Eclipse plug-in, allows developers to:
- Author and edit scripts
- Interactively compile, execute, and debug scripts
- Save compiled scripts on the mainframe in a VSAM file, under the control of CICS
- Convert COBOL copybooks to the equivalent ECMAScript and XML
- Generate and test SOAP requests
- Generate WSDLs to define web services.
- Because scripts are compiled, runtime efficiency is outstanding. Also, HostBridge Process Automation scripts work with virtually any middle-tier environment.
Predefined Objects
HostBridge Process Automation ships with predefined program objects that can be used within a script, allowing it to perform a wide range of operations – virtually anything a COBOL program can do.
Some predefined objects included with HostBridge Process Automation are:
- CICS command-level access
- CICS transaction execution
- COMMAREA program execution
- Simple API for XML (SAX) parser
- SOAP RPC response writing support
- Others.
Others are available as optional modules, including VSAM, DB2, DL/I, and Datacom modules. These are described on the HostBridge Data Access Modules page.
