Web Service Clients

Introduction

Web Services: Key to Mainframe Modernization showed how easy it was to create web services that could access and update mainframe data. Clients for these services can be written in any language, but writing these clients can be difficult as they must carefully obey the interface rules. And if these rules change, then the clients will need to be changed also. Fortunately MANASYS Jazz can also generate client-side interface programs.

Creating a Client Interface

With a JSON web service MANASYS Jazz can create a web service interface to communicate with the service that you’ve generated. These clients allow apps to access the web service with methods and properties, just as they would communicate with any other local object.

The 3 ½ minute video Bridging Two Worlds shows this process. With only two clicks a C# client-side program is generated to work with your web service. You can now write your actual client in C#, Java, VB.NET, … to use this interface. Instead of your client program having to understand the detail of the message formats and the interface rules, it communicates with the interface using methods and properties as it would with any other local object. Interface properties are validated locally, for example non-numeric Employee numbers are immediately detected and reported in a message field without requiring a request/response round trip. Your app logic doesn’t need to code this validation, it only needs to check a message field or code. Reading, updating, writing, and deleting records are simple method calls with parameters. Data that the client needs to communicate, but doesn’t need to know, like a checksum used to ensure that updates are valid, are held within the interface but hidden from the client.

Writing your actual app is now greatly simplified. And, should the web service change, you probably won’t need to change your app unless you need to take advantage of new properties or methods. For most changes you’ll only need to regenerate the interface, and you may not even need to do this.

More Information

This Help Page gives detailed information about setting up interface projects and creating web service interfaces and clients.

My presentation to the Virtual CICS Users' Group on May 10^th covers the same material as the Bridging Two Worlds video, but in much more detail. Click https://youtu.be/APEdmqWdWPM to see this presentation: the video is 51 minutes long, the presentation starts at 3:40m, questions at 37m.

Conclusions

With easy generation of web services AND their client interfaces MANASYS Jazz has dramatically simplified the task of getting mainframe data to and from the client world of Windows, web, and mobile apps. Whether your legacy modernization plan retains mainframes long term, or you plan to retain mainframe technology only until you can replace it, you need the productivity that MANASYS Jazz can give you.

This is the 6th of a 10-part series of articles about MANASYS Jazz. Click below to see previous articles
1. What is MANASYS Jazz?
2. How does MANASYS Work?

3. Convert Easytrieve to COBOL with MANASYS Jazz

4. Mainframe Modernization Issues

5. Web Services: Key to Mainframe Modernization

See our web page if you want more information about MANASYS Jazz and to see what else it can do. Contact us if you have any questions, or connect with us on LinkedIn. Download a free evaluation copy to try out MANASYS Jazz yourself.