IMS Resource Adapter: Web-Enabling IMS

by Dorothy Lin,
Leilei Li,
Jack Yuan


February 1, 2006

As companies today build IT infrastructures that are oriented to Web-enabled applications, the ability to integrate with and access information associated with an Enterprise Information System (EIS) such as IMS becomes increasingly important. These legacy systems contain data critical to successful day-today operations; as the trend moves toward a Web Services world, it’s necessary to Web-enable these systems and their data to integrate them with new, emerging technologies. The advent of business-to-business communication has the IMS resource adapter playing an integral role in achieving open integrated solutions for IMS.

 

IMS Resource Adapter

A resource adapter allows seamless integration and connectivity between an EIS such as IMS and Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) application components and application servers. The resource adapter lets the EIS system and J2EE application communicate. Specifically, the IMS resource adapter, also called IMS Connector for Java, which is based on J2EE Connector Architecture (JCA), is used by Java applications and application servers to access IMS transactions running on host IMS systems. The IMS resource adapter can plug into an application server that supports J2EE, such as WebSphere Application Server (WAS), and access an IMS system, reducing both development time and costs and providing customers with a scalable, available, interoperable solution.

The IMS resource adapter is stored in a Resource Adapter Archive (RAR) file. Similar to a .zip file, an RAR file is a compression of one or several files and is used to package resource adapter interfaces and implementation classes for use by J2EE applications in application servers.

Like all resource adapters, the IMS resource adapter abides by the JCA standard guidelines known as system-level contracts. These contracts determine how a system external to the J2EE platform (such as IMS) can integrate with the J2EE platform. The IMS resource adapter supports basic functions such as:

• Connection management, which lets application components and application servers pool connections to IMS
• Transaction management, which lets an application manage and perform transactional access across one or many IMS and DB2 subsystems
• Security, which provides support for secure access to IMS.

 

The IMS resource adapter provides a standard Application Program Interface (API) through which a client application accesses IMS. Java applications that submit transactions to IMS primarily use the IMS resource adapter. The IMS resource adapter can be used in a development environment and at run-time.

In the development process, C, COBOL, or MFS definitions of IMS transaction input and output messages are mapped to Java data structures and used to generate Java applications. These applications, which can be packaged as an Enterprise Archive (EAR) file and built in an application development environment, are then deployed to run on an application server. An EAR file is a zipped archive file that contains standard Java archive files such as J2EE application components and Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs). The IMS resource adapter is included in WebSphere Studio Application Developer Integration Edition and in Rational Application Developer for use in the development of Java applications. Figure 1 illustrates the use of the IMS resource adapter during development.




More info about the authors:

Dorothy Lin
Leilei Li
Jack Yuan