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For organizations that have a continuing investment in CICS® applications, the HostBridge JavaScript Engine (HB.js) enables creation of JavaScript/JSON-based integration scripts and APIs. HB.js scripts work with all types of CICS applications without relying on screen scraping. HB.js is a complete solution for rapidly developing and deploying reusable Web services and/or scripts.

With HB.js, you can:

  • Modernize CICS applications by creating a services boundary to them
  • Orchestrate CICS terminal-oriented transaction micro flows as single services
  • Orchestrate and aggregate transactions, programs (e.g., COMMAREA), and data into single composite services
  • Integrate any mainframe with any distributed app – Web and mobile applications, cloud architectures, service-oriented architectures (SOAs), other enterprise applications, etc.
  • Create dynamic object-oriented applications that simplify and revitalize legacy applications for modern environments. HB.js fully supports a wide range of object-oriented scripting/Web services types and protocols, including JavaScript, JSON, XML, SOAP, SOAP 1.2, RESTful services, Ajax, Atom, HTML, and E4X (ECMAScript for XML).

Orchestration

With HB.js, developers can easily incorporate complex CICS transaction micro flows that can involve interaction with dozens or even hundreds of screens into a single, reusable Web service.

Integrating these micro flows using sub-optimal, middle-tier integration technologies has serious performance implications: they require a full request-response cycle with the mainframe for each transaction, driving up latency.

Instead, HB.js executes the entire transaction sequence on the mainframe, orchestrating and aggregating all relevant data and returning a single response, typically with sub-second response times. This approach is more reliable, more efficient, lowering response times and costs.

Hybrid and Composite Apps

HB.js allows an existing portfolio of CICS applications to easily participate in hybrid IT strategies. Customers can integrate valuable, legacy applications with hybrid applications, or modernize complex legacy applications as new, composite apps. Whatever the end goal – integration, modernization-in-place, or replatforming – HB.js supports all these objectives through the object-oriented capabilities of HB.js. Developers can simply write new, dynamic applications within a Web services application architecture.

Development Environment

Developers can use HB.js to expose System Z apps and data using the same high-performance, industry-standard technologies used by today’s leaders in mobile, web, and cloud computing. The HostBridge Eclipse Integrated Development Environment (IDE) allows developers to easily and rapidly author, test, and deploy HB.js scripts/Web services and complies with DevOps standards and best practices. The IDE includes HB Transaction Explorer, a graphical display that precisely replicates CICS screens. Using this tool, developers can navigate live terminal-oriented CICS application micro flows to develop highly reliable integration scripts/services.

Production Environment

HB.js is zIIP-enabled, runs inside CICS, and supports:

  • CICS 3270 screen-based transactions
  • BMS, non-BMS, 3270, and CA application types
  • COMMAREA programs
  • DB2®, VSAM™, DL/I, Datacom®, and other data assets
  • Connectivity via HTTP, LINK/EXCI, Enhanced WebSphere MQ
  • Extended Multi-Region Operation (MRO)
  • Other CICS and z/OS tools and technologies.

HostBridge Socket Support (HBSS) is high-performance software that replaces CICS Socket Support (EZASOKET). Organizations that perform high-volume transaction processing with CICS Socket Support can improve performance while potentially saving hundreds of MIPS on a sustained basis by using HBSS.

Customers that have written CICS Socket applications and run high volumes of socket input/output can use HostBridge Socket Support to:

  • Optimize socket processing
  • Reduce MIPS consumption on the general-purpose processor
  • Shift socket workload to the zIIP*
  • Reduce mainframe TCO

* HostBridge customers can run HostBridge Socket Support on their zIIP specialty engine and shift a significant portion of their socket workload to the zIIP. HostBridge further optimizes socket processing performance by minimizing switching between the GP and the zIIP.

Performance

Using HostBridge Socket Support, customers have improved socket processing performance by as much as 44%. The larger an organization’s socket I/O volume, the more they can save.

The HostBridge Transaction Analytics Connector (HTAC) is for any SIEM-using organization that also uses CICS transactions to provide functionality to end user devices. HTAC exploits the transaction tracking infrastructure IBM has added to CICS, allowing enterprises to fully understand the impact of web and mobile transactions on the mainframe. With HTAC, SIEM systems such as Splunk gain an end-to-end view of these transactions for performance management or auditing purposes.

 

When used with an SIEM platform, HTAC makes it possible to correlate CICS transactions with their points of origin on mobile or other distributed applications to know:

  • The total duration of the user experience, including network latency
  • The amount of time a transaction spent in each mainframe subsystem
  • If a transaction completed successfully or failed
  • If a transaction fell outside of predefined performance goals

 

Environment

 

HTAC runs within any supported version of CICS (5.x recommended) and enables tracking of any type of CICS transaction.

We bridge the gap between your mainframe and the hybrid cloud.

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