GT Software BLOG

Being called a champion is a great accomplishment. But when you can say you’re the two-time or back to back champion, it sets you apart from your peers. Congratulations goes out to our own Dusty Rivers for being name IBM Champion for the second year in a row by IBM for his innovative leadership within the data management community. An IBM Champion is an IT professional, developer or educator who leads and mentors those in the IBM technical community and helps them make the best use of IBM solutions and services.

“On behalf of IBM, it is with great pleasure that we recognize Dusty as a 2011 IBM Champion,” said Beth Flood, IBM Champion Program Manager. “Thank you for your leadership and contributions to the data management community. You continue to be among a very small group to be chosen for this recognition.”

Rivers, a Principal Technical Architect for GT Software, has an extensive 33-year background in global mainframe systems integration…

Read the full press release here.

JavaScript Web Designers Can Now Easily Integrate with the Mainframe Using Ivory Service Architect

ATLANTA, June 20, 2011 – GT Software, a global provider of mainframe integration and data access solutions, today announced that its flagship product, Ivory Service Architect, now supports JSON as an option for web service processing.  

“This latest enhancement makes Ivory Service Architect easier for developers to use, and opens the door for JavaScript web designers to access the IBM mainframe — enabling more people than ever before to leverage mainframe applications and data,” said Wes Young, Senior Vice President of Sales for GT Software.

“This reinforces Ivory Service Architect’s position as the most cost-effective, flexible mainframe integration tool on the market today.”

Read the full press release here.

The film features one hundred people, who each present the IBM achievement recorded in the year they were born. The film chronology flows from the oldest person to the youngest, offering a whirlwind history of the company and culminating with its prospects for the future.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39jtNUGgmd4&feature=share

If you have ever doubted the impact of the mainframe on our daily lives, you need to take 30 minutes and watch this video.    So many people take for granted using a credit card, making a phone call or other mundane tasks.   Systems created 30, 40, or more years ago make this happen.

Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrhDaAmn5Uw

If you’re using or considering IMS SOAP Gateway or CICS Web Service Assistant, you need to understand the limitations of these free tools. Learn about the hidden costs, complications and inefficiencies that come with “free” by attending our live webcast.

Live Webcast: The real cost of bundled mainframe integration tools

Date: July 27, 2011

Time: 1 p.m. ET/10 a.m. PT

Presenters: Rob Morris and Don Spoerke, GT Software
Register now

The free tools only work in limited, rigid scenarios that don’t exist in most environments. For instance, free tools don’t support Occurs Depending On or REDEFINES, can’t leverage XML schemas, require that your copybooks must match perfectly with your WSDL requirements, and assume all web services workload will run on your mainframe.

If the exact qualifications for using free tools don’t exist in your organization, you will spend time and money to write new code, to maintain the new service, to purchase additional software, and for increased MIPS. Plus, it could take months instead of days or weeks.

GT Software’s Rob Morris and Don Spoerke will take you through specific examples so you know what to expect when you opt to use free tools. Plus, find out what the alternative to free tools, Ivory Service Architect, can offer your organization.

Ivory Service Architect enables you to extend access to mainframe applications, data and processes using web services — with no code written, generated or changed and no additional MIPS usage. Ivory Service Architect requires minimal training and offers quick deployment.

Sign up today

Yes, those immortal words take me back to a high school stage in 1978 when life was easy and I really didn’t “pay no mind” to the words being sung.    Irving Berlin may not have really known how those words would ring true even today, but I digress.

The possibilities for a play on words here are just too easy.   But seriously, what isn’t that easy is trying to take Natural applications and integrate them with modern web applications.   It’s just plain hard.    Adabas data access can be difficult too.  Fortunately, GT Software is also doing what comes naturally and that is making integration easy by extending the powerful capabilities of Ivory Service Architect to also include inbound and outbound web service enablement for Natural applications and Adabas data.

If you have Natural applications that need to call web services, or if you want to web service enable your existing Natural apps and data, give GT a call.   You can also view a rebroadcast of our last webinar titled “Boost Development Initiatives with Native Access to Natural / Adabas“ or read the full press release here.

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is an Internet Protocol for accessing distributed directory services that act in accordance to X.500 data and service models with roots in the Telco industry and honed by 70 years of expertise.  X.500?  With X.500 there is a single Directory Information Tree which is distributed across one or more servers.

Each entry of the X.500 Directory structure consists of a set of attributes.  The server may return the values of an attribute, the attributes in an entry, and the entries found by a search operation in any order. This follows from the formal definitions – an entry is defined as a set of attributes, and an attribute is a set of values, and sets need not be ordered.

So now that you know about the directory abilities of LDAP, what can you do with LDAP?

An LDAP client (JXPlorer for example at http://jxplorer.org) can if programmed accordingly:

• Start TLS – Use the LDAPv3 Transport Layer Security (TLS) for Secure Connections
• Bind – Authenticate and specify LDAP protocol version
• Search/Compare  – Look up directory entries and see entry has a certain value
• Add/Delete/Modify Entries – Normal directory maintenance
• Abandon – Abort Operation
• Unbind – Close connection

Hey wait a minute. The LDAP directory doesn’t look anything like my directory system on the mainframe (e.g. RACF).  Given all of this information, why in the world would one want to consider putting an LDAP on the mainframe?  Think about it for a second.

1. Isn’t your mainframe the centerpiece of your IT Universe?
2. RACF in fact can be used as the back-end Database for LDAP (as well as DB/2).
3. RACF is a robust almost impenetrable security system.
4. IBM provides an LDAP Server for z/OS which provide centralized control.
5. The RACF Security Administrator can easily maintain RACF and not have to learn another Security System.

So if you have web or other corporate applications that need a COMMON directory against which to authenticate users then what more natural place than the mainframe especially since a bulk of corporate data resides on the mainframe?

R. Scott Ray

GT Software

Enterprise Systems Director

If you want a real surfin’ safari, then catch a wave and join GT Software at the 2011 WAVV Conference in Colorado Springs April 15^th – 19^th, 2011 at the Crowne Plaza, Colorado Springs.   WAVV is a user group promoting the interests of the users of the VSE, VM, and Linux operating systems. WAVV holds an annual conference consisting of over 100 educational sessions as well as a vendor show where vendors of VSE, VM, and Linux related products can show their wares and meet with current customers.

On Sunday at 3:00 PM in Pikes Peak III, Don Spoerke will present “GT Software’s Solutions for Maximizing the Integration and Usability of VSAM files on VSE”.  Don will present an in-depth overview of how GT Software’s Ivory suite can help developers maximize the usability of VSAM data without impacting development or IT resources.  Reusing these files saves time, money and eliminates the need to re-host the data for the purpose of BI, warehousing, or integration to new applications.   Also join Don at the SPLASH Exhibit Hall on Sunday from 7 – 11 PM, and Monday from 12:45 – 3:00 PM and 7:00 – 11 PM.  Click here for more information on WAVV 2011.

Please join GT Software at the 2011 IBM Impact Conference in Las Vegas April 10th – 15th, 2011 at the Venetian and Palazzo Hotels.  The IBM Impact 2011 Global Conference will bring together more than 6,600 technology and business leaders at a single event for a transformative learning opportunity.  Never has it been more important to work smarter for better business outcomes. IT professionals can learn the latest technology trends and quickly build skills in WebSphere, BPM, SOA and Cloud solutions and will come away with the expertise to help advance your career and advance your organization’s ability to improve business outcomes and grow.

Rob Morris will be presenting “Drive Value and Cut Costs with Mainframe Web Services“ on Tuesday, April 12^th from 4:45 – 6:00 PM in the Venetian – Delfino 4001A room.  Rob will focus on how mainframe integration and Web services using Ivory from GT Software can drive maximum value from your existing mainframe investments, while cutting costs. Many think this problem is completely ‘solved’ with WebSphere MQ, free utilities, or out of date approaches. This session will challenge those beliefs and empower you to drive maximum value from the mainframe while lowering costs.  Also join GT Software as we exhibit the Ivory suite at the zZone Solution Center.   Solution Center hours can be found here.

IBM VM (Virtual Machine) is an operating system created by IBM that runs on IBM Mainframe Systems.  VM provides the virtualization technology that enables multiple copies of operating systems to run as GUEST Operating Systems (commonly referred to as GUESTs) on a common physical hardware platform.  VM provides a robust virtual computing platform.  The motivating factor behind virtualization technology is realizing huge economies of scale as we will see later on discussion of z/Linux.

Originally released in 1972 as VM/370 because it ran on the IBM/370 mainframe.  VM/370 ran a re-implementation of CP/CMS System.  CP/CMS has several previous versions including CP-40/CMS and CP-67/CMS.  VM/370 was based on a CP-370/CMS.  The CP (Control Program) piece is the hypervisor used to share computing resources of the physical hardware and CMS is a User Time-Sharing and Editing environment.  Simply put, CP/CMS is the administrative and user environment of VM.

z/VM is the current implementation of IBM’s VM and run on all of IBM latest Mainframe Systems including the z/10 and z/Enterprise Systems (z196).  The z/VM Hypervisor CP (Control Program) provides the mechanisms for sharing hardware and software resources that enable virtualization in z/VM.  A series of CP commands and scripting can be used to provide the virtual environment with which the GUEST operates.

z/Linux is a complete implementation of Linux on System z.  Linux implementations for the IBM Mainframe were developed in labs over a period of late 1998 and early 1999 with a commercially available package available in 2000.

Using a combination of z/VM and z/Linux, a customer can literally run thousands of Linux GUESTs on a single IBM Mainframe platform.  As mentioned earlier in this article the user community can realize tremendous economies of scale by establishing a Many to One relationship between the z/Linux GUESTs (MANY) to a common physical hardware platform (ONE).  IBM Mainframes have a specialized processor called an Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL) to handle the z/Linux workload.  The real beauty of IFLs is that they run at Uniprocessor speed (Full Throttle) and are NOT “knee-capped”) as are the General Processors (GPs) used for running other mainframe workload.  With z/Linux, the customer is not hassled with providing commodity based hardware platforms that may only provide a ONE-for-ONE environment.

The market for z/Linux is rapidly expanding and maturing.  Production, Development and Test/QA environments have found real relevance for z/VM and z/Linux.

R. Scott Ray

Enterprise Systems Director