Intel® Software Network

Business agility requirements are forcing mainframe systems towards SOA enablement at increased rate. The common primary objective is to extend the reach and reuse of key data and business logic from the mainframe to other applications and business processes in the enterprise without stealing valuable MIPS away from the mainframe. The other common objective is to have a more flexible capability to "re-locate" processing from mainframe compute cycles to a different platform in order to optimize the use of computing resources while not breaking upstream and downstream system interfaces.


These common two objectives often mean that loose coupling becomes a primary requirement. This can be achieved by using a message-oriented middleware (MOM) or message queue (MQ) to act as a network protocol and data payload "bridge" between the mainframe and an established service interface. The main advantages are that this type of architecture supports reliable messaging to protect messages from loss, works well in asynchronous integration patterns, and can be effectively triggered through event-driven transactions.  Another approach is to use a web services framework for the mainframe. In this case, mainframe assets like CICS transactions and IMDB databases are directly exposed with a SOAP web service interface.  It is a slick technology upgrade that is easy to deploy.  However, like with any web services implementation security, performance, and protocol interoperability (REST for instance) still need to be covered. 

The third approach is to directly apply an integration middleware product to a data feed on the mainframe.  The integration middleware often converts data structures between a COBOL copybook and XML.  The integration middleware also handles the network protocol translation between what the mainframe can understand and what the other protocols in the SOA architecture (like web services, REST over HTTP, JMS, etc.) require.  The main benefit of this approach is that business rule processing can be readily put into the integration middleware and offloaded from the mainframe without a functional or regression impact to the overall IT landscape.  

These integration scenarios create the need for additional component in the middle with capabilities like message reliability (MOM model), support for SOA-enabling a diversity of mainframe assets (web services framework), and business rule offload (integration middleware). Yet, a secure, high-performance and flexible service intermediary like Intel SOA Expressway is a common piece of infrastructure needed to establish a SOA-capable mainframe. Intel SOA Expressway can serve as intermediary in all scenarios to support the additional security, interface and interoperability scenarios at high performance. It provides the COBOL copybook conversion function and protocol translation at very high levels of execution performance through straightforward configuration.