NEON Systems' Brings Web Services Directly to the Mainframe with the Launch of Shadow z/Services.SUGAR LAND, Texas -- Single-step Configuration Eliminates Programming -- Accelerates Web Services (1) Loosely, any online service delivered over the Web. Such usage appears in articles from non-technical sources, but not in IT-oriented publications, because definition #2 below describes the correct use of the term. Development -- Lowers Total Cost of Ownership NEON(R) Systems Inc. (Nasdaq:NEON), a leader in enterprise-class mainframe integration, today announced the availability of Shadow z/Services, SOAP-based mainframe integration solution that allows organizations to rapidly transform CICS (Customer Information Control System) A TP monitor from IBM that was originally developed to provide transaction processing for IBM mainframes. It controls the interaction between applications and users and lets programmers develop screen displays without , IMS (1) See IP Multimedia Subsystem. (2) (Information Management System) An early IBM hierarchical DBMS for IBM mainframes. IMS was widely implemented throughout the 1970s under MVS and continues to be used under z/OS. , and Advantage CA-IDMS applications into Web services. Increasingly organizations are turning to a modern Service-Oriented Architecture See SOA. (SOA (1) (Start Of Authority) The first record in a DNS zone file. See DNS records. (2) (Service Oriented Architecture) The modularization of business functions for greater flexibility and reusability. ) as a foundation for re-purposing mainframe investments within new composite application In computing, the term composite application expresses a perspective of software engineering that defines an application built by combining multiple services. People often compare composite applications to mashups. development. Shadow z/Services' easy-to-use, single-step configuration can accelerate the development of mainframe Web services by eliminating the additional programming typically required with competing mainframe Web services products. Shadow z/Services' Studio interface eliminates the complexity of creating and implementing mainframe-based Web services, allowing Java and .NET developers to use existing skills and tools, increasing productivity and accelerating the ability to re-use mainframe resources in support of new business requirements. "Organizations pursuing application strategies that include the mainframe platform should consider a services-oriented architecture for integration with new more modern platforms," said Dale Vecchio, research director, Gartner Research. "The realities of today's economic conditions and the failures of massive migrations to new platforms are causing companies to leverage their existing install base -- SOA is seen as a great way to do it." Holland America Lines, a provider of luxury and exotic cruises, deployed Shadow z/Services as an interface to their Voice Response System, which allows customers to call in and check their reservation information. "The use of NEON's Shadow z/Services gave us a very convenient and straightforward way to re-use existing mainframe application code in order to provide a higher level of service to our customers," Jerry Fica, Project Lead DBA, Holland America Lines. "With the accelerated adoption of Web services, organizations with significant investments in mainframe technology now have a real opportunity to use the resources of the mainframe to drive new business value," said Mark Cresswell, president and CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. , NEON Systems. "NEON's new Shadow z/Services delivers an industry-leading mainframe Web services solution for organizations that need to respond quickly and cost effectively in order to meet changing business requirements. This product enables the mainframe to participate more rapidly and cost-effectively in composite application development." Web Services Support for Business Logic and Screens Shadow z/Services allows developers to easily expose mainframe application logic and application presentation environments as Web services. Utilizing the product's Introspection technology, developers are able to dynamically parse the application program and screen definitions and generate the Web Services Description Language “WSDL” redirects here. For other uses, see WSDL (disambiguation). The Web Services Description Language (WSDL, pronounced 'wiz-dəl' or spelled out, 'W-S-D-L') is an XML-based language that provides a model for describing Web services. (WSDL (Web Services Description Language) An XML-based language for defining Web services. Developed by Microsoft and IBM, WSDL describes the protocols and formats used by the service. ). Additionally, for screen-based applications, Shadow z/Services allows developers to orchestrate a logical flow between multiple screens to support a business process. The resulting microflow can be published as a SOAP-based Web service. To improve response times to the Web services consumer, the microflow executes from within the Shadow z/Services Address Space thereby eliminating the network latency See latency. typically associated with screen navigation solutions. External Mainframe Web Services Support In order to support a comprehensive Services Oriented Architecture approach, organizations need support that allows the mainframe to participate equally as both a Web services provider and Web services consumer. Shadow z/Services' Web services client component enables mainframe application developers to invoke external Web services from CICS/TS, Advantage CA-IDMS, and Batch. The mainframe application developer does not need any familiarity with SOAP or WSDL and can continue to operate within a traditional application development framework with one key difference -- the easy availability of external Web services functionality. Industry Support for Shadow z/Services "Customers need solutions that reduce the cost and complexity of integration, particularly when it involves building composite applications that include mainframe resources. Using NEON's Shadow z/Services in combination with WebLogic Platform 8.1 allows organizations to leverage existing IT assets within Service Oriented Architectures in order to accelerate services delivery and increase business responsiveness," said Bobby Napiltonia, vice president and general manager, worldwide channels and alliances, BEA Systems BEA Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: BEAS) is one of the major companies developing enterprise infrastructure software. BEA makes middleware, products that help software run on top of databases. . "Web Services and Service-Oriented Architecture are offering a faster and simpler approach to application and data integration," according to David Clarke, senior vice president of Products at Cape Clear Software. "NEON Systems' Shadow z/Services is enabling organizations to extend their mainframe applications as standards-based services which can be quickly integrated with other internal and external services via an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB (Enterprise Services Bus) A message broker that supports Web services. See message broker, messaging middleware and Web services. ). Once integrated, those mainframe applications can then be combined with other IT assets to deliver new services inside the organization and out across the Internet to customers and trading partners. Cape Clear is working with NEON Systems to provide full ESB support for Shadow z/Services." "NEON's Shadow z/Services delivers on the imperative need to simplify how proven mainframe investments can participate in new solutions to meet new business needs while still maintaining enterprise scale performance and security requirements," said Roger Sippl, CEO of Above All Software. "Above All Studio easily leverages the services generated by Shadow z/Services for rapid integration with the packaged, custom and desktop applications within the enterprise." Shadow z/Services Technical Features: Shadow z/Services includes several components and features designed to accelerate the development and deployment of mainframe Web services: --Single-step Configuration: A Web service can be created simply by identifying the target system and application program definition or microflow name through an intuitive graphical user interface graphical user interface (GUI) Computer display format that allows the user to select commands, call up files, start programs, and do other routine tasks by using a mouse to point to pictorial symbols (icons) or lists of menu choices on the screen as opposed to having to . This is made possible by many of the features identified below. --Dynamic Introspection: Dynamically parses application program and screen definitions. This facility dramatically reduces the time to value for mainframe Web services and lowers the cost of ongoing maintenance considerably. --Microflow Orchestration: Capabilities for microflow orchestration of multiple applications into a single Web service. Enables granularity of the Web service to match the needs of the consumer application rather than the legacy system. --Zero Programming/Minimize Impact on Production Environments: Shadow z/Services requires zero additional code to be written thereby further reducing the time to value, and lowering the implementation risk and cost. --Shadow z/Services Studio -- The gateway to Shadow's z/Services and all Shadow design time, configuration and testing needs, Shadow z/Services Studio is an Integrated Development Environment See IDE. integrated development environment - interactive development environment (IDE) for development, management and administration of mainframe Web services integration. --Highly optimized SOAP parser A routine that analyzes a continuous flow of text-based input and breaks it into its constituent parts. See parse. (language) parser - An algorithm or program to determine the syntactic structure of a sentence or string of symbols in some language. : Allows for XML XML in full Extensible Markup Language. Markup language developed to be a simplified and more structural version of SGML. It incorporates features of HTML (e.g., hypertext linking), but is designed to overcome some of HTML's limitations. parsing See parse. parsing - parser and SOAP message processing. Designed for, low CPU CPU in full central processing unit Principal component of a digital computer, composed of a control unit, an instruction-decoding unit, and an arithmetic-logic unit. overhead and low memory footprint. --Flexible security: Seamlessly integrates into existing mainframe security infrastructures using mainframe SAF SAF Safety SAF Society of American Foresters SAF Society of American Florists SAF Secretary of the Air Force SAF Second Amendment Foundation SAF Singapore Armed Forces SAF Students for Academic Freedom SAF Store And Forward services, which support RACF (Resource Access Control Facility) IBM mainframe security software introduced in 1976 that verifies user ID and password and controls access to authorized files and resources. RACF - Resource Access Control Facility , ACF/2, TopSecret mainframe security packages in order to maintain the integrity of application security; exploits SOAP header for UID/PWD or UID (programming, database) uid - 1. user identifier. 2. unique identifier - of any sort, possibly following sense 1. Compare with SKU for sense-development. ; supports SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) The leading security protocol on the Internet. Developed by Netscape, SSL is widely used to do two things: to validate the identity of a Web site and to create an encrypted connection for sending credit card and other personal data. encrypted sessions. --Support for Complex Data Structure: Shadow z/Services has comprehensive support for complex application data structures, including binary field usage, nested OCCURS DEPENDING ON, and REDEFINEs. Availability Shadow z/Services is generally available now through NEON's direct sales organization and NEON's worldwide network of distributors and resellers. For additional product information call 800-505-6366 or visit http://www.neonsys.com/Shadow/shadow_zservices.asp. To obtain licensing information or to locate a reseller, visit http://www.neonsys.com/about_us/ContactUs.asp on the World Wide Web. About Shadow NEON's Shadow technology reclaims the value of mainframe-based services and events, providing scalable, real-time legacy integration with security across a broad range of data, applications and presentation environments. Shadow is designed to enhance mainframe integration on both a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Event-Driven Architecture (EDA (1) (Electronic Design Automation) Using the computer to design, lay out, verify and simulate the performance of electronic circuits on a chip or printed circuit board. ). With a strong commitment to industry standards, Shadow can dramatically reduce integration complexity and accelerate application development for systems based on J2EE (Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition) A platform from Sun for building distributed enterprise applications. J2EE services are performed in the middle tier between the user's machine and the enterprise's databases and legacy information systems. , .NET or Web Services. Delivering the flexibility to meet customers' unique implementation needs, Shadow can be cost-effectively deployed as either an infrastructure-based, programmatic integration server or a suite of mainframe adapters. About NEON Systems NEON Systems Inc. (Nasdaq:NEON) is a leading provider of enterprise-class mainframe integration solutions, delivering a unified mainframe integration platform to support the entire range of requirements for modern Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) and emerging Event-Driven Architectures (EDA). NEON's Shadow technology is designed to reduce the complexity of mainframe integration allowing large organizations with significant commitment to mainframe systems to streamline incumbent technologies and lower total cost of ownership. With decades of mainframe expertise, NEON is uniquely qualified to reduce the risk organizations face when supporting new business initiatives that integrate with mainframe systems. For more information on the future of mainframe integration, see our Web site at www.neonsys.com. The NEON logo, Shadow, Shadow Direct and Shadow Web Server are registered trademarks, and Shadow Connect, Shadow Event Publisher, Shadow Event Connect and Shadow Console are trademarks of NEON Systems Inc. in the USA and in other select countries. All other trademarks, service marks and product or service names are the property of their respective owners. |
|
||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion