Patterns: Extended Enterprise SOA and Web Services

Appendix C. CICS Transaction Server Web services 515

C.2.1 CICS Web services assistant

The CICS Web services assistant is a set of batch utilities which can help you to

transform existing CICS applications into Web services and to enable CICS

applications to use Web services provided by external providers. When you use

the Web services assistant for CICS, you do not have to write your own code for

parsing inbound messages and for constructing outbound messages. CICS

maps data between the body of a SOAP message and the application program's

data structure.

The CICS Web services assistant comprises two utility programs:

򐂰 DFHLS2WS

This program generates a Web service binding file from a language structure.

This utility also generates a Web service description. This is used for

bottom-up development.

򐂰 DFHWS2LS

This program generates a Web service binding file from a Web service

description. This utility also generates a language structure that you can use

in your application programs. This is used for top-down development.

The JCL procedures to run both programs are in the

<CICS_HIGH_LEVEL_QUALIFIER>.XDFHINST library.

C.2.2 CICS resources for Web services

The following CICS resources support Web services:

򐂰 PIPELINE provides information about the message handler programs that act

on a service request and on the response. Typically, a single PIPELINE

definition defines an infrastructure that can be used by many applications.

򐂰 WEBSERVICE is required only when the mapping between application data

structures and SOAP messages generated using the CICS Web services

assistant. It defines aspects of the runtime environment for a CICS application

program deployed in a Web services setting.

򐂰 URIMAP is required only for a service provider, and contains information that

maps the URI of an inbound Web service request to the other resources

(such as the PIPELINE) that will service the request.

򐂰 TCPIPSERVICE is required for a service provider that uses the HTTP

transport, and contains information about the port on which inbound requests

are received.