11.2 Design guidelines

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11.2 Design guidelines

In this scenario, the source application needs to invoke services provided by a target CICS system, as shown in Figure 11-1. Using the Web Services Gateway as an adapter connector makes it possible to decouple the source application from the target application, with all protocol and message conversion handled by the gateway.

Figure 11-1: Direct Connection——Call Connection— Web Services Gateway Product mapping 2

The IBM Web Services Gateway allows our source application to access the target CICS service as an HTTP Web service. An important reason for using the gateway is that it allows a number of different technologies to be accessed as Web services.

This pattern models the connector between the source application node on the left and the gateway node in the middle, and the connector between the gateway and target application node on the right, as simple lines.

If further detail is need, the source application node to gateway node connector can be modeled using coupling adapter connectors. The gateway node to target application node connector can be modeled using an adapter connector. Figure 11-2 shows we are using the WebSphere SOAP provider as coupling adapter connectors from the source, and the CICS Transaction Gateway as adapter connectors to the target.

Figure 11-2: Detailed design with product mappings

The IBM CICS Transaction Gateway and the Enterprise Services toolkit in WebSphere Studio Application Developer Integration Edition enable J2EE application integration with CICS applications. More information on J2EE Connectors and the Enterprise Services toolkit can be found in 12.3, "Development guidelines" on page 269.

In Figure 11-3, the structure of the gateway connector adapter is specified in more detail, highlighting four main components:

• IBM WebSphere Application Server V5.0, which provides the J2EE platform implementation.

• IBM Web Services Gateway, which enables Web services connectivity between applications.

• CICS ECI J2EE Connector, which allows J2EE applications to access CICS applications.

• Deployed proxy and data types, which are developed using the Enterprise Services toolkit in IBM WebSphere Studio Application Developer Integration Edition V5.0.

Figure 11-3: Solution architecture overview

This solution provides a Java-based interface and a Web service interface to the target CICS service. This solution can be used to provide a wide range of client platforms with access to the target CICS service, in both intra-enterprise and inter-enterprise integration scenarios. The adoption of a Web service interface provides an open standards-based way of accessing the system.

In the development phase, wizards provided in WebSphere Studio Application Developer Integration Edition can be used to develop the connector solution without requiring you to write code.

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