Big Iron's SOA Value Proposition

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February 04, 2008

Big Iron's SOA Value Proposition

One of the coolest aspects of SOA is that it is oblivious to any of the platforms underneath that support it. That means even the oldest and most rigid mainframe systems can be re-energized (or modernized, as IBM likes to call it) to handle a new generation of applications and end-user demands.

As part of my ongoing work with Unisphere Research, I published a survey of SOA deployments and plans at mainframe sites, conducted in cooperation with SHARE, the IBM mainframe and large systems user group.

In our survey of 430 SHARE members (link to PDF download of executive summary), we found that many mainframe systems are at the center of efforts to extend applications into SOAs.

The SHARE survey found companies are still in the early stages of expanding the capacity of their current mainframe systems to support SOA. Close to one out of four respondents' companies have SOA efforts now in progress, and another one-third are planning or considering SOA. At least half of those engaged in or planning SOA say they are or will employ mainframes in a central role.There's still a lot of work that needs to be done, of course. Fewer than one out of ten could say that an appreciable amount of their SOA-based services are shared across two or more business units.

There are some great case studies out there on SOAs built on top of mainframes, and here's one story of Mainframe SOA in Action: According to an new report in SearchSOA, the Ohio Bureau of Worker's Compensation has moved its mainframe-based operations to a service-oriented architecture. Most new development occurs in .NET, but, as the report notes, " most of the data relating to more than $19 billion in assets is in mainframe IBM DB2 databases interacting with COBOL applications and using CICS."

BWC used the CA Gen tool to deliver more than 100 reusable mainframe services, consisting of CICS transactions.

Such data is consumed by the .NET applications that update the status of workers' compensation policies and claims for employers and workers accessing the information via standard Web browsers. Some large datasets will have to be eventually be moved off the mainframe environment, since CICS COBOL has 32k-data limits of how much data can be passed through the system, a challenge that was overcome by enabling applications to make multiple passes through the CICS servers.

Posted by joemckendrick in Case Study • SOA | Digg This | Add to del.icio.us