Access to Legacy Applications and Data

Identifying Strategies

To leverage Web technology, an enterprise must make its business applications and data easily accessible to its employees, key business partners and customers. This goal is sometimes difficult to achieve because so much mission-critical data (up to 80 percent of vital business information for many large corporations and government agencies) is stored in host-based file systems and databases on IBM mainframes or AS/400 computers. This information—product specifications, customer profiles, position descriptions, and much more—is often unavailable to people who need it most, at the time they could make best use of it.

Delivering large amounts of data from legacy systems to many widely dispersed users has always been difficult because:

Legacy hardware and system software is very expensive, often prohibiting expansion on an Internet-wide scale.
IBM network protocols are not widely supported outside the legacy environment—on the Internet, for example.
Application development costs are high, discouraging the development of modifications needed to make legacy data more widely available.

By using IIS 5.0 Web applications to access legacy applications and data on IBM systems, you can:

Integrate host applications running in legacy environments into IIS ASP applications. Connect host transaction processors to Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Server, by using SNA Server 4.0 SP2 and Microsoft® COM Transaction Integrator (COMTI) for Customer Information Control System (CICS) and Information Management System (IMS) databases.
Access legacy files at the record level using SNA Server 4.0 SP2 and Microsoft® OLE DB Provider for AS/400 and Virtual Sequential Access Method (VSAM) Data Provider. Send the data to a Web application running on Windows 2000 Server.
Acquire host database structures using Microsoft® Host Data Replicator (HDR). Replicate them for Microsoft® SQL Server and IIS 5.0.
Move the automated processes from the legacy environment to the open, more costeffective Windows 2000 Server environment. To accomplish this, use IIS 5.0 and Microsoft® Component Services (formerly Microsoft® Transaction Server).

See the following:

Connecting to SNA