Special Edition Using Java™ 2 Enterprise Edition

Socket Connections to Existing Systems

Although mainframes are notoriously unfriendly toward Unix and Windows applications, they have become a little more accessible in the last few years. Most mainframe operating systems support socket connections (TCP/IP network connections). One of the problems you still face, however, is that most mainframe applications aren't very cooperative.

If you're lucky, someone else has already faced the connectivity problem and written a communication library for you. The rest of the time, however, you must develop a communication protocol yourself. If you're new to socket programming, you can find out more about it in Chapter 27, "Network Programming." Basically, you'll need to write some sort of server on the existing ...