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Leveraging Mainframe Assets in a SOA
Mainframe systems may seem too outdated to justify ongoing improvements, yet they are too important to retire. Much of a company’s business value resides on the mainframe.
In addition, advances that IBM has made with the mainframe have actually led to increased usage. zIIP / zAAP / IFL is making the mainframe more cost effective, and the ability to use the mainframe (a single machine) vs. hundreds of Wintel machines is a decided advantage.
“This [reusability provided by DataDirect Shadow] provides us with the kind of scalability we need to ramp up integration on a wide scale and to do so in a cost-effective and easily managed way. Employing common components in the solution also improves the economic efficiency of the system by enabling us to leverage parts of it across a number of services.”
Miami-Dade County
In the past, efforts to migrate these complex systems proved
to be too costly and time consuming and in many cases was simply not an option because the mainframe is mission critical to the business.
Now companies are finding ways to integrate these valuable assets into their SOA strategies instead of retiring them.
However, traditional approaches to mainframe integration, using gateways, adapters, multiple management consoles,
and servers have proven too complex. Often these methods created a bewildering array of point-to-point connections that added costs, complexity, and risk of failure to an organization’s mission-critical infrastructure.
The secret to successful mainframe integration is an approach that extracts new value out of legacy systems without requiring risky changes to the systems themselves.
DataDirect Shadow – A Single Platform for Integrating the Mainframe into a SOA
New mainframe integration technologies like DataDirect Shadow enable you to deploy new services in a fraction of the time and cost required with traditional point-to-point integration.
SOA-based Access to Mainframe Assets
Click graphic for a full-sized image.
Functioning as a single, industry standard SOA platform, Shadow provides flexibility in how to use your mainframe within a SOA. It does this by enabling web services directly to the mainframe and supplying data to non-mainframe resident services by enabling them with direct SQL access to a broad range of mainframe data, programs, and applications. DataDirect Shadow puts one non-invasive interface between your SOA applications and mainframe business logic, screen logic, and data.
DataDirect Shadow can measurably reduce complexity, points of failure, and the associated costs of maintaining the typical "accidental" architecture that defines most SOA integration scenarios.
Bi-Directional Web Services
Besides providing the means of making mainframe data, programs, or screens available as services for use by distributed computing applications, assets generated by a distributed platform can be made available as services for use by applications running on the mainframe.
SQL Access to Mainframe Data
You can incorporate DataDirect Shadow SQL access into an SOA data tier, abstracting the data access logic from the business logic. When you have the flexibility of a data tier, each time a data source is altered, you don’t have to update all the services that access that data. The change can be managed (often automatically) at the data tier. Using DataDirect Shadow, you can build a foundation for interoperable, robust, and reusable data services.
Choosing DataDirect Shadow enables the mainframe to become a first-class participant in your SOA strategy.
To learn more about leveraging your mainframe assets in a SOA, read the white paper from ZapThink, “The Mainframe as a First Class SOA Participant.”
If you would like to speak to an expert about how DataDirect products can meet your SOA needs, please call 1-800-876-3101 or submit a Request for Information form and an account executive will contact you.
