TechEd 99 - Babylon

From SNA Server to Babylon

July 9 - Integrating data from a variety of heterogeneous data sources is one of the key challenges of the near future. Microsoft started addressing this issue with the release of SNA Server 4.0 by providing an ODBC driver for getting data from IBM mainframes - definitely a great step forward. With SP2, Microsoft also made available an OLE DB provider for DB2, easing the task for COM objects capable of remote TCP/IP connections with host machines.
      In most real-world scenarios what you actually need to do is run legacy procedures, rather than build a new collection of business objects that duplicate the existing logic. To achieve this you set your code to act as a human operator through terminal emulation and screen scraping.
      The smartest solution to these issues consists of encapsulating the client-to-terminal dialog into COM objects. COMTI (COM Transaction Integrator) is the basic component that helps you accomplish this under Windows NT. Basically the COMTI Component Builder (a sort of wizard) acts as a parser and translates COBOL instructions into a COM type library. Your client application just makes COM calls while the COMTI service, under the hood, provides access to transactions running on a mainframe.
      Because COMTI is a Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) component, it takes advantage of specific MTS features, including multiple threading and object management for improved performance. COMTI supports both CICS and IMS transactions.
      With the advent of Windows 2000 and COM+, COMTI is expected to become a COM+ service to allow Windows programs to interoperate with critical applications already deployed on other vendor's platforms. The new version of SNA Server, code-named Babylon, is expected to add spice to this category of components which seem to be part of a forgotten world, far from the bright lights of COM+ and Windows DNA.
      One of the presentations at TechEd 99, by Bob Hyman, the Microsoft group program manager for host integration products, demonstrated how to reuse existing business logic built into CICS and IMS modules. During his presentation, Bob also pointed out what will be new in Babylon.
      In particular, full integration with the COM+ infrastructure is provided, since COMTI is destined to become just a COM+ application. You'll also get a mechanism to do screen-scraping; support for XML to facilitate the exchange of complex data types; and a brand new SDK to help COMTI work with particular screen layouts and terminal procedures.

Dino Esposito

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