Shadow z/Services
Mainframe Web Services in Service-Oriented Architectures
DataDirect Shadow z/Services is an enterprise-class SOA enablement solution that allows core mainframe systems to serve as both providers and consumers of Web services functionality. In effect, Shadow z/Services extends the many benefits of proven enterprise computing into the modern world of SOA infrastructures.
Moreover, Shadow’s unique architecture accelerate SOA initiatives on the mainframe with lower costs and faster performance. By diverting processing-intensive SOAP and XML parsing away from the mainframe’s General Purpose Processor to the zIIP specialty engine, Shadow lowers MIPS capacity usage and reduces Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
DataDirect Shadow z/Services is the industry’s most comprehensive platform for mainframe SOA enablement, with integrated technologies that support bi-directional web services publishing, consumption and orchestration.
Shadow simplifies the transformation of legacy applications, both business logic and screens as well as mainframe data, into ready-to-integrate Web services. Also, Shadow expands the reach of the mainframe across an organization’s enterprise by enabling the consumption and integration of external, heterogeneous Web services into familiar mainframe functions.
Shadow z/Services for Application and Screen Logic
Shadow transforms mainframe application logic and screen-based processes into ready-to-integrate Web services, allowing new composite applications to directly access proven mainframe functionality at runtime. Internally, Shadow handles SOAP message processing and XML parsing to eliminate potential operational impacts to mainframe applications. Shadow also automatically generates starter programs, simplifying the testing of newly created services. Supported application environments include:
- CICS TS
- IMS TM
- IDMS
- Natural
Shadow z/Services for Data
Shadow internally transforms mainframe data into a virtual RDBMS, enabling new SOAP-based distributed applications to transparently perform operations against mainframe data sources. Supported database environments include:
- DB2
- IMS DB
- VSAM
- Adabas
Shadow z/Services Web Services Consumption
Shadow Web Services Consumption (WsC) transforms heterogenous and distributed Web services into familiar mainframe functions, allowing the mainframe to effectively consume distributed SOA functionality. Shadow WsC integrates with a wide variety of distributed and mainframe environments.
Improvements in Web Services consumption - Shadow z/Services now allows mainframe programs to consume Web Services in an asynchronous manner. This capability reduces the performance and scalability impact within high-volume IMS/TM environments by eliminating blocking program wait time during Web Services calls. Shadow eliminates the limitations associated with the single-threaded nature of IMS/TM by ensuring that Web Service calls are made asynchronously, eliminating the need to block processes. In addition, nearly all Web Services consumption processing is now eligible to be diverted to the System z Integrated Information Processor (zIIP) reducing total cost of ownership.
- J2EE Application Framework
- Microsoft .NET Framework
- COBOL
- Natural
- CA-IDEAL
- Assembler
- FORTRAN
- PL/1
Shadow shields developers from the complexity of mainframe SOA transformation by providing an intuitive, highly-functional development environment, seamlessly tied to a mainframe integration server that provides secure, scalable, enterprise-class performance.
Development
Providing a highly-graphical intuitive interface, built on Eclipse, Shadow Studio allows developers to employ familiar industry-standard J2EE or .NET development environments to access or publish mainframe data, business logic or screen assets as ready-to deploy SOAP Web services.
Deployment
Shadow is one of the most advanced mainframe integration runtime environments available and serves as the foundation element for enabling cost-effective, mainframe modernization, SOA enablement, data access and business event processing.
Shadow’s z/OS ‘footprint’ appears to the mainframe as a native z/OS started task and has been designed for maximum reliability and minimum resource utilization, without compromising its ability to support thousands of users and thousands of transactions per second.
Unique to Shadow is its patent-pending hybrid threading model called the Logical Dispatchable Unit which dynamically switches between the Task Control Blocks (TCB) and enclave Service Request Blocks (SRB) depending on the system need. This fundamental capability of Shadow allows it to run up to 99% of its integration related processing within the non-measured specialty processor named the System z Integrated Information Processor or zIIP.
An inherently more robust product than competing mainframe integration solutions, Shadow z/Services provides multiple options for deploying mainframe Web services in order to better meet customized infrastructure requirements. For Shadow z/Services solutions, the runtime options are:
- Shadow BPEL – An industry standard BPEL 2.0 runtime that offers high performance and lower costs through the exploitation of the zAAP specialty engine.
- Shadow Server – When the requirement is high performance data access via a SOAP interface, Shadow offers a robust, multi-threaded, native runtime server that deploys within a started task on the mainframe.
- CICS Region – When transforming application business or screen logic into Web services, Shadow offers a runtime server that deploys within a CICS region on the mainframe, offering four high-performance options for direct access: COMMAREA, OTMA, 3270 Bridge/Linkable Bridge, and FEPI.
- Shadow Distributed – When tn3270 or tn5250 API screen access is the requirement, Shadow also provides a Windows-based, mid-tier solution requiring no software installation on the mainframe.
Shadow z/Services provides robust features that streamline SOA transformation of mainframe relational and non-relational data and programs.
- Enhanced Scalability – Shadow’s dynamic load balancing and virtual connection facility reduces the possibility of application failures, improves application availability and performance, as well as supports virtually unlimited concurrent users and transaction rates. Shadow also exploits IBM’s Unicode hardware assists, which dramatically reduces resource consumption.
- Security Optimization & Management – Working with established client and host security protocols to optimize user sign-on authentication, Shadow reduces the overhead and potential bottlenecks associated with processing thousands of Web service connections back to the mainframe security manager.
- Multiple Transport Support – Shadow provides multiple transport options to increase the flexibility of integrating mainframe resources into SOAs or composite application development initiatives, providing support for either HTTP or MQ networks.
- Dynamic Introspection Technology – Shadow goes beyond the limitations of terminal emulation by exposing screen data as field names rather than as row/column coordinates, improving developer productivity, reducing application maintenance, and increasing application reliability.
- Native Microflow Execution – Microflows execute within Shadow on the mainframe, which improves performance by reducing 3270 traffic over the network, and allows the administrator to control the flow of the application based on the content of a particular field.
- Bi-Directional Web Services Support – Shadow transforms distributed Web services into familiar mainframe functions, enabling the mainframe to consume SOA functionality from distributed platforms.
- Synchronous and Asynchronous Service Consumption – Within high-volume transactional environments such as CICS or IMS TM, synchronous processing sometimes has a negative impact on performance and scalability when programs block during Web Services calls. Shadow WsC answers this concern by enabling mainframe-resident requester programs to invoke a web service in an asynchronous manner.
Shadow’s foundation architecture provides holistic zIIP exploitation across all of the Shadow integration options, providing up to 99% offload to the zIIP specialty engine for integration related processing. By diverting processing intensive data and SOA integration workloads from the mainframe General Purpose Processor, Shadow improves performance while lowering the TCO.
And, Shadow opens up the zIIP to databases beyond DB2, to include IMS DB, VSAM, Adabas, IDMS, as well as processing related to SOAP/XML parsing for the transformation of business logic and screen logic in CICS, IDMS, IMS DB or Natural.
