The IMS™ Enterprise Suite SOAP Gateway is a Web
service solution that integrates IMS assets
in a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) environment.
The SOAP Gateway enables IMS applications to interoperate outside of the IMS environment through SOAP to provide
and request services independent of platform, environment, application
language, or programming model.
You can enable an IMS PL/I
application or a COBOL application for Web services by using a wizard
from the Enterprise Service Tools to generate Web service files for
the specified IMS application.
You then deploy these Web service files to the SOAP
Gateway to make the specified IMS application available as a Web service. Different
types of client applications, such as Microsoft.NET, Java, and third-party applications, can then
submit SOAP requests into IMS to
drive the business logic of the PL/I or COBOL application.
There are two main steps to enabling your IMS application as a Web service
running in the
IMS Enterprise
Suite SOAP Gateway environment:
- Use the Create New Service Interface (bottom-up) wizard from the
Enterprise Service Tools to generate Web service files for your IMS application. (The generated files
are described in the next paragraph.)
- Use the IMS deployment utility
to deploy the Web service interface to the SOAP
Gateway. (The IMS deployment
utility allows you to define connection and correlation information
for the Web service.)
In the first step, you use the Create New Service
Interface (bottom-up) wizard from the Enterprise Service Tools to
generate the Web service files from an existing PL/I
source file or COBOL source file in your IMS application.
The source file must contain the request and
response interface data structures for your IMS application. In most cases you do not have
to modify or add to your existing IMS application
source code.
The wizard generates the following Web service files:
- A Web Services Description Language (WSDL) file, which describes
the Web service interface of the IMS application
so that the client can communicate with the Web service.
- A correlator file, which contains information that enables the IMS Enterprise
Suite SOAP Gateway to set the IMS properties
and call the IMS application.
- A PL/I or COBOL source file that contains a Web
service driver and runtime XML conversion programs. These runtime
XML conversion programs convert request and response data
in XML format (which is the format used by SOAP), to and from the request and response interface data structures
in your IMS application (either
PL/I or COBOL).
For more information about using the IMS Enterprise Suite SOAP Gateway, including
samples, see IMS Enterprise
Suite SOAP Gateway documentation and the IMS Enterprise Suite SOAP Gateway Web
site at http://www.ibm.com/ims.