Implementing and Testing SOA on IBM System z: A Real Customer Case

Implementing and Testing SOA on IBM System z: A Real Customer Case

by Christian Matthys, Mathias Bonnard, Sylvie Lemariey, Jean-Louis Pimont, Alain Roessle
Released August 2007
Publisher(s): IBM Redbooks
ISBN: None

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Book description

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is one of the most important topics on the agenda of any IT person. SOA involves a new vision of how to design, develop, and manage applications. It also has new requirements when building an architecture for the underlying infrastructure.

This IBM Redbooks publication is the result of a project managed in the IBM European Design Center, based in Montpellier, France. The scope of the project involved helping a major worldwide customer in the automotive industry to validate and justify an SOA implementation. In particular, the customer wanted to add new business values to work with its partners, by adding new data models. It also wanted to modernize an infrastructure, by adding new Internet interfaces. The customer faced the need to eradicate an obsolete programming language. Furthermore, it wanted to build a smooth migration path, with as few risks and costs as possible.

The thought, planning, and architecture of the new system, which included integration of the SOA concepts, was built by the customer with the participation of Atos Origin, a leading international IT services provider. The existing customer IT infrastructure was already built around UNIX systems, IBM System z, non-IBM clusters, SAP solutions, 3270 screens, IMS-DL/I databases, and specific code. SOA was the right solution to connect this existing environment to new components using Java, Web services, and DB2 in particular.

This book explores the business needs and the architectural choices that were faced by the customer. It describes the mock-ups and prototypes, provides performance numbers that were used to validate the decisions, and explains how they were implemented. It also suggests a generic and riskless solution to eradicate the obsolete programming language.

Table of contents

  1. Notices
    1. Trademarks
  2. Preface
    1. The team that wrote this book
    2. Become a published author
    3. Comments welcome
  3. Chapter 1: Customer business needs and architectural choices
    1. The customer vision and constraints
      1. From silos to composite applications
      2. The methodology aspects
      3. A project-leading approach that favors reuse (1/2)
      4. A project-leading approach that favors reuse (2/2)
      5. The customer environment and business context (1/2)
      6. The customer environment and business context (2/2)
      7. The current IT application
      8. The future system
    2. The architecture choices
      1. A target vision that conforms to the SOA-BPM model
      2. An iterative development and progressive deployment
      3. SOA-BPM vision of the business processes
      4. SOA-BPM vision of the Create_Order process
    3. From the architecture to the prototype
      1. SOA implemented with the integration platform from WebSphere Version 6
      2. Experimentation of the WebSphere Business Integration platform
      3. System z as the target platform (1/2)
      4. System z as the target platform (2/2)
      5. Comparison between the SAP and WBI V6 mock-ups
      6. Two implementations of the SOA-BPM architecture
      7. The WBI V6 mock-up (1/2)
      8. The WBI V6 mock-up (2/2)
      9. The SAP mock-up (1/2)
      10. The SAP mock-up (2/2)
    4. Results and benefits
  4. Chapter 2: Application design
    1. System context and functionalities
      1. The system context
      2. The functionalities of the application
    2. Architectural model
    3. Components of the application
      1. The processes implemented into the WebSphere Process Server
      2. Data access
      3. The Create_Order process
      4. The Register_Order subprocess
      5. Implementation of the WMS simulator
      6. The links between the subsystems
    4. Flow of the application implemented on z/OS
  5. Chapter 3: Implementation of the WebSphere Process Server V6 mock-up
    1. Description of the WBI V6 mock-up
      1. The Manage Order system
      2. The Business Logic system
      3. The Warehouse Management system
      4. The Generate Order system
      5. Summary
    2. Infrastructure and configuration
      1. The hardware and software infrastructure
      2. The WebSphere Process Server configuration (1/2)
      3. The WebSphere Process Server configuration (2/2)
      4. Service Integration Bus (1/3)
      5. Service Integration Bus (2/3)
      6. Service Integration Bus (3/3)
  6. Chapter 4: Mock-up extensions
    1. BPM extensions: A long-running process with manual tasks
      1. Adding a human task to the automatic process
      2. Extended process modeling with the WebSphere Business Modeler
      3. Adding a business rule for order checking
      4. Manual task management with the MyTasks portlet
    2. Monitoring business processes using WebSphere Business Monitor
    3. XForms extensions: Placing orders using Workplace Forms
    4. B2x portal extensions: Portlets personalized by user profiles
      1. Offering personalized access to users
      2. Exposing Web services with IBM WebSphere Portlet Factory
  7. Chapter 5: From the current architecture to the SOA: A migration experience
    1. A generic solution to eradicate the obsolete language
      1. Enterprise Generation Language overview
      2. Solutions to eradicate the obsolete language
      3. Automating the conversion to EGL
      4. Combining conversion and rewriting
      5. Three classes of applications
      6. Valorizing an obsolete language system
    2. Target architecture of the new system
      1. Architectural principles of the prototype
      2. Complete architecture of the new system
      3. Proposed development plan for the OM subproject
  8. Appendix A: Performance tests
  9. Abbreviations and acronyms
  10. Related publications
    1. IBM Redbooks
    2. Online resources
    3. How to get IBM Redbooks
    4. Help from IBM
  11. Index (1/2)
  12. Index (2/2)
  13. Back cover

Product information

  • Title: Implementing and Testing SOA on IBM System z: A Real Customer Case
  • Author(s): Christian Matthys, Mathias Bonnard, Sylvie Lemariey, Jean-Louis Pimont, Alain Roessle
  • Release date: August 2007
  • Publisher(s): IBM Redbooks
  • ISBN: None