October 21, 2009

LEGACY SYSTEMS & SOA(If you have a Legacy System, your journey to SOA is

half-complete!)

DisclaimerThe views expressed here are solely the author's and should not be attributed to InterGlobe Technologies or its clients.

Ashish Pradhan

Pradhan.Ashish@gmail.com

Introduction: Mainframes, SoA & Legacy

� GOAL: All of us here understand SOA & we know Legacy-

Mainframes. What relationship do they share with each other?

• Over the next 15-mins, let’s explore that & it’s significance to an

organization that uses a Legacy-MF

� Mainframes (MFs) are still around & how!

• Movement to SOA has so far ignored MFs

• At best, MFs have been reluctant participants

� Smarter action: Bring them into SOA

• MFs need SOA + SOA needs MFs!

� My Definition of legacy:

• If you do not speak SOA, you are legacy!

• Corollary: If your MF speaks SOA, you are not legacy!

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Origin of SOA for Legacy?

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The SOA experts on the distributed-systems had no knowledge of MF applications; the MF application experts had no knowledge of SOA (Both ignored each other!)

2001

2004

2006Web Services started evolving in the distributed-platforms (SOA was nowhere to be seen)

There was pressure to expose Web Services from MFs too (SOA had started gaining good-support on the distributed-systems)

Web Services for MFs got implemented through rigid, proprietary interfaces

It will not be wrong to say. . .

For MFs, SOA did not evolve at all – Only Web Services happened!

2009

Opportunity exists to go ‘True Mainframe SOA’

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Business Environment: Influence on SOA

� If SOA never evolved for Legacy system MFs . . .Is that bad?

• Absolutely NOT. In fact, that is the opportunity now!

� SOA for distributed-systems evolved faster & has now become a victim to the hype that was created by vendors of SOA products

• Inability to measure ROI tangibly for SOA has further fuelled talks

• Lessons learnt here serve as valuable inputs to SOA for MFs

� With the economic-downturn in 2009, obituaries have started appearing about SOA

• Tens-of-blogs and articles are proclaiming- ‘SOA is Dead’

• What is the truth? ? ?

� The truth is:

• The term, ‘SOA’ may have fallen off books for a section of business-

sponsors; but the principles of ‘service-orientation’ it proclaims are

extremely relevant today!

• SOA is also transforming itself and becoming more nimble, small &

transparent!

Business Environment: Influence on SOA (contd)

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Econom

ic

slo

wdow

n

Metamorphosis

Cloud

SaaS

No separate SOA Infrastructure(Mainframe Hosted SOA Solutions)

SOA

SOA is only a concept: View Legacy differently!

� At the risk of sounding very simplistic, I say:

― We have got a basic SOA in place by just viewing the legacy-system

differently!

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Why SOA for Mainframes?

� Legacy-MF houses the enterprise’s assets in it!

• Not reusing these assets through newer-channels (eg. Telephony (Text-

to-speech data-announcements), e-Commerce, etc) is a waste!

• Having a point-to-point interface is not a sustainable clean-approach

• A good SOA implementation addresses both of these effectively

� We want Enterprise SOA, not SOA for distributed systems only!

• All parts of the organization should be able to find & leverage MF-assets

• A functional SOA implementation with minimal/no MF participation has limited benefits to the organization

� SOA for MF is the secret weapon of the CIO running an organization with legacy-MF

• Remain business competitive for M&A

• Integration of legacy platforms/consolidation becomes a breeze

• SOA can be implemented while leveraging MF-hardware- no new boxes!

Past journeys of so-called, ‘SOA for MFs’

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• Used hand-coded scripts /programs to move data from their MFs to other platforms or databases (‘Info-Integration Challenge’)

• Only a very small % of enterprise data from MF was exposed through Web Services

• Had problems identifying which legacy programs could be turned into a Web Service and exposed

• MF Application programmers did not understand SOA/Web Services; the SOA experts from distributed-systems did not understand the MF-applications!

• MF acted as a Server exposing Web Services; Never as a consumer!

• Application Servers resided on another platform & accessed MF

Common observations across the industry

Recent developments in SoA for MFs

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Key points:•Transform MF into a full-fledged SOA participant•MF can be both: A provider of enterprise services & a consumer•MF can act as a Service Intermediary•MF can now house the SOA Infrastructure; no external hardware•Data integration tools: Provide reliability & scalability

Scenarios:•MFs that were Web Services enabled 5-years back do not have a complete SOA framework

• Should these MFs jump & now embrace ‘True MF SOÁ’?— NO! Learnings of past do not recommend a standalone

investment in SOA. It is a strategic decision not tactical!•Time the SOA-implementation to ride-along with a big-turnkey business project (Eg. M&A)

Key points:•Transform MF into a full-fledged SOA participant•MF can be both: A provider of enterprise services & a consumer•MF can act as a Service Intermediary•MF can now house the SOA Infrastructure; no external hardware•Data integration tools: Provide reliability & scalability

Scenarios:•MFs that were Web Services enabled 5-years back do not have a complete SOA framework

• Should these MFs jump & now embrace ‘True MF SOÁ’?— NO! Learnings of past do not recommend a standalone

investment in SOA. It is a strategic decision not tactical!•Time the SOA-implementation to ride-along with a big-turnkey business project (Eg. M&A)

Common observations across the industry

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Using MF for SOA Infrastructure

� Key observations in support:

• Inherent benefits of MF: performance, reliability & high-availability

• No additional hardware investment necessary

• Several Mainframe SOA solutions exist today from IBM & Vendors

• IBM has taken steps to support SOA initiatives on MF

� IBM has introduced ‘Speciality Engines’ on MF: zIIP & zAAP

• zIIP: System-z9 Integrated Information Processor

• zAAP: System z Application Assist Processor

• IFL (Integrated Facility for Linux) : Run Linux on MF (i.e. zLinux)

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Speciality Engines on MFs

� Speciality Engines Advantages:

• ‘Qualified load’ can be passed to ‘Speciality Engines’ – This load does not

count against MIPS usage!!

• Reduces load on GPP (General Purpose Processor) thereby reducing TCO

• No speed capping on Specialty Engines (Not restricted to GPP speeds)!

• Examples of Qualified Load:

― DB2 Processing & DB2 Queries

― Data-integration/transformation on MF for SOA

― XML Parser: Marshalling & De-marshalling

― JAVA Runtime: Consume External Web Services

� A game-changer from IBM: Speciality Engines

• A vendor’s MF-SOA Solution that leverages Speciality Engines makes sense!

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In Summary . . .

� A legacy-system today is no longer a challenge in the journey

towards SOA

� Including the Mainframe as an active-participant in the SOA

journey, creates an exciting opportunity to revitalize &

rejuvenate the organization!

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