Multiple Subsystem Support

The mainframe is about more than just COBOL, IMS or any one application or sub-system. A critical component of any Web services product is the ability to support a comprehensive set of mainframe sub-systems and databases.  With Ivory, you are not limited to supporting just COBOL or IMS.  Ivory offers full support for:

• Application Presentation Logic:  CICS/TS, IMS/TM, CA IDMS, CA Ideal, Natural
• Application Business Logic:  CICS/TS, IMS/TM
• Data:  DB2, VSAM, IMS/DB, ADABAS, CA-Datacom, CA-IDMS
• Non-conventional interfaces and applications:  MQ Series, CORBA, custom applications, encryption and compression routines

Ivory facilitates the integration of all mainframe assets within a single service, regardless of underlying platforms, languages and data formats, from 3270 “green screen” applications to mission-critical batch functionality.

For example, with a “Get Customer Detail” service, the customer’s address might be on a CICS 3270 screen, the purchase history in a COMMAREA program, financial information in an IMS database or VSAM file, credit bureau data in an external Web service – all of which are assembled and orchestrated in Ivory. While this speaks to the needs of applying SOA principles to online systems, batch is also a critical component of any mainframe shop.

Additionally, Ivory offers a feature called the Delegate Node.  The Delegate Node is a URM, or User Replaceable Method, which is a catch-all type node to allow complete customization of the Ivory process by a customer or GT supplied routine.  The Delegate process in Ivory provides methods for clients to provide a URM to interface with the Ivory runtime assets. Customers can also provide their own access methods to data sources that are not standard in the Ivory product.  The Delegate Node will then enable Ivory to orchestrate logic for these data sources.