Designing Enterprise Applications using Host Integration Server
There are those who think demonstrations of Visual
Studio .Net complete with whizzo graphics and lots of fanfare makes a
session exciting. For some of us, it’s equally impressive to see one line
appear on a character-based green monitor. Why? Because of the opportunities
that one line offers for a simple life.
Host Integration Server is Microsoft’s Enterprise
Server for those of you who need to use data from mainframe and midrange
computers, and Paul Larsen (Lead Program Manager of Host Integration Server)
was showing off its features to a well attended session this afternoon. Paul
took us through the features offered in HIS 2000, showing how the demo had
been created. The demo itself was pretty impressive, showing an application
linking four banks using a disparate range of systems – SQL Server and
Microsoft Message Queue Server, IMS and MQSeries, CICS, DB/2 – the list was
impressively off-putting, just the sort of environment you really don’t want
to mess with. The actual demonstration involved the client application at
one bank requesting a funds transfer from another bank, the second bank
agreeing to the transfer, a central clearing bank matching the transactions,
and the money moving across. Well, we saw the transactions appear on the
monitor, complete with a green screen monitor showing the transactions going
through.
We were also shown how the COM/TI component wizard took
the information from a COBOL program downloaded from the mainframe, and
pulled out the parameters so the component would react correctly, and Paul
pointed out one of the most important aspects of HIS and the use of
components: that Windows programmers don’t need to know about mainframe
programming. Instead, the overhead could be as low as one developer in a
team getting to grips with the HIS client-side applications such as the
component wizard, and all the other developers just using the components
created by that developer.
It’s always good to attend sessions where the speaker
not only knows the subject in real depth, but obviously believes in his
product, and this was just such a session.
Kay Ewbank
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