Solutions for Mainframe System Programmers

If your responsibilities include developing and/or maintaining applications on a mainframe, ask yourself:

  • Do you face pressure from within your organization from initiatives calling for the replacement of mainframe applications and data sources with web-based and non-mainframe equivalents?
  • Have attempts to migrate applications and data sources off the mainframe met with little or no success or had unsatisfactory results?
  • Are your organization’s Windows, UNIX, and/or Linux application developers requesting access to mainframe data and business logic?
  • Would your database-centric application developers benefit from interaction with mainframe data and business logic using SQL and stored procedure logic?

Large enterprises in particular often have their richest data and transaction processing assets deployed on legacy mainframe platforms. Faced with the need to leverage those assets, they run up against a standards wall: mainframe platforms were simply not designed for modern distributed environments, and are too different to seamlessly coexist with them.

One obvious solution — to scrap the mainframes altogether — is far from attractive, for several reasons:

  • Mainframe environments represent enormous investments in hardware and software costs and developmental efforts.
  • Beyond their comparatively cloistered nature, mainframe systems typically have nothing inherently wrong with them. On the contrary, they are often the most dependable and valuable systems an organization has.
  • Mainframe systems are very often mission-critical. Who really wants to risk the downtime migration will entail?

Is Replacement the Right Solution?

Many mainframe shops have discovered an alternative with DataDirect Technologies’ Shadow. Shadow enables non-invasive, simple, reliable, scalable, and secure enterprise-class integration between .NET or J2EE applications and z/OS mainframe environments. Its single mainframe architecture acts as a mainframe services bus providing comprehensive support for web services, real-time events, direct SQL data access, and web enablement, allowing for seamless integration with Service-Oriented Architectures and event-driven architectures.

Shadow technology lets distributed platform developers transparently incorporate mainframe artifacts into new business applications, employing reusable services in a manner with which they are entirely familiar.

Why Use DataDirect’s Shadow?

Routinely used for 24x7 transaction rates running into thousands per second, DataDirect’s Shadow components undergo rigorous testing using our proprietary in-house testing suites as well as externally-developed suites.

Shadow can:

  • Reduce integration complexity and increase business efficiency
  • Accelerate application development
  • Reduce implementation risks
  • Improve business agility
  • Unlock real-time potential of the enterprise

Want to learn more about what DataDirect offers mainframe system programmers? Visit the following relevant pages on our website:

  • Solutions for Web Services/SOA — Deploy new services in a fraction of the time and cost required using traditional point-to-point integration between the mainframe and distributed platforms, by leveraging the inherent reusability of web services within a standards-based service-oriented architecture (SOA). Your legacy business assets are transparently transformed into services that can be used and reused by Java or .NET developers using their existing tools and skills.
  • Solutions for Direct SQL Access — Deliver enterprise-class direct SQL access to mainframe data and applications (business logic and screens) utilizing industry-standard ODBC, JDBC, or JCA (J2EE Connector Architecture) APIs. Distributed platform developers employ mainframe-based data and applications just as they employ data and stored procedures on locally available relational databases.
  • Solutions for Real-Time Events — Utilize real-time events to maintain data consistency between distributed databases and mainframe systems of record, making your data more accurate and consistent throughout your enterprise. In addition, Shadow Solutions for Real-Time Events enables the power of combining real-time business-significant events with SOAs. Multiple applications can simultaneously subscribe to a published event, unleashing the power of massive parallelism in your organization’s system processing.
  • Solutions for Web Enablement — Provide simple access to mainframe screen applications that can be accessed by ASP web servers or.NET and/or your Java applications, improving services through modern, user-friendly interfaces and increasing efficiency through more convenient mainframe access methods.

To learn more about how DataDirect addresses specific needs, see the following:

To speak with an expert about DataDirect solutions for IT operations, please call 1-800-876-3101 or submit a Request for Information form and an account executive will contact you.