DataDirect Technologies Optimises Web Services Security and Development for More Rapid and Efficient SOA Enablement
SLOUGH, England (BUSINESS WIRE)
07-Mar-2007
DataDirect Technologies, the leader in data connectivity and mainframe integration and an operating company of Progress Software Corporation (Nasdaq: PRGS), today announced new capabilities within the DataDirect(R) Shadow RTETM mainframe integration suite for optimising web services security, testing and development across a broad range of mainframe databases, business logic and screen-based applications.
Mainframes have a reputation for being very secure, however as enterprises expand the role of the mainframe to more fully participate in Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA), the security protocols that protect mainframe assets need updated technologies to enable them to work efficiently in the stateless environment of loosely-coupled Web services. Originally designed to support individual sign-on, mainframe security protocols, such RACF from IBM, are now required to process thousands of Web services logins per hour, creating an authentication bottleneck that slows performance and consumes expensive mainframe CPU cycles needed to support the security manager.
The new Security Optimisation and Management (SOM) feature in DataDirect Shadow(R) manages and optimises mainframe security authentication for any process requiring authentication, such as a Web service or SQL call. In benchmarks performed by DataDirect Technologies' mainframe development lab, test results indicated an overall reduction of 138 percent in authentication overhead for more than 99.3 percent of the processes requiring security authentication.
Shadow SOM works in conjunction with the established client and host security protocols to eliminate redundant authentication requests by caching security credentials. It also maintains the integrity of the security infrastructure by subscribing to updates in the security manager database. All the major enterprise security protocols, including RACF and CA's ACF2 and Top-Secret are supported.
The Eclipsed-based Shadow Studio development tool is also enhanced to now include an industry standard Web services test tool to rapidly check the operational integrity of any mainframe Web service created by the Shadow product.
The Shadow RTE mainframe integration suite supports all the major industry-standard paradigms - Web services, direct SQL access, XML events or Web enablement - for integrating mainframe data, business logic and screens with SOA and other distributed application development initiatives.
For more information, visit www.datadirect.com.
CONTACT: Saffron Communications Ltd for DataDirect Technologies
Salli Roskilly
T. 01763 208708
E. salli@saffroncoms.com
SOURCE: DataDirect Technologies
