|
|
|
 |
Background
The explosive growth of the Internet has continued to fuel demand for access
to and integration of computer resources across the network. Applications
for E-business, e-commerce, e-government, etc. are proliferating, causing
the volume of transactions for goods, services, and information to steadily
increase. As this environment evolves there are emerging needs to integrate
services such as email, telnet, ftp, and http with the functionality of
an organization's business-specific applications.
Sirius Software has developed Janus Sockets to make it easy to establish
the connection between Model 204 applications and resources and any other
application or resource on a TCP/IP network.
What is a Socket?
To communicate over TCP, a client program and a server program establish
a connection to one another. A socket is one end-point of the communication
link between those two programs on the network. Each program binds a socket
to its end of the connection. To communicate, the client and the server
each reads from and writes to the socket bound to the connection.
For Model 204, Janus Sockets $functions are used to establish a connection
and communicate between Model 204 and a remote client or server program.
Other Janus products have algorithms built in to handle the underlying
complexity of the incoming and outgoing data. That is, the User Language
application is written against well-defined structures, like row-and-column
data for Janus Open Server, or HTTP header or form field values for Janus
Web Server. Janus Sockets is different. A socket is generic by design and
will allow any sort of data to be passed back and forth. Janus Sockets
simply provides the TCP/IP packet handling, buffering and some translation
services, and the User Language application is written to handle whatever
comes wrapped in the packet. You could, for example, write a web server
using Janus Sockets, but the User Language programs would have to handle
all the complexity of the HTTP packets. As a rule, Janus Sockets is targeted
at more specific services, not generalized functions like web service.
Janus Sockets $functions are used
to establish a connection and communicate between
Model 204 and a remote client or server program.
Typical examples of the things that users can do with Janus Sockets
include:
-
Exchange data using HTTP and XML with other servers especially inB2B applications.
-
Flash applications and Java applets can be served over the web, but for
them to refresh themselves in real-time, a sockets interface that can
send XML is required. With Janus Sockets it is possible to do the job with
just a few dozen lines of User Language code.
-
Communicate with handheld devices such as palm Pilots, WAP phones and bar
code scanners.
-
SMS messaging: A User Language application can send a short message in
an HTML stream to an SMS portal which in turn sends the message to the
specified pager or cell phone.
-
Synch your palm pilot directly to 204. Without a sockets interface this
would require printing the required data to an external file, probably
using FTP to move it to a UNIX service machine and then synching your Palm
to this out-of-date data. With Janus Sockets you could both synch your
Palm to 204 and synch 204 to your own data. A good application for this
would be a group calendar application, or something to let teachers' pick
up class schedules and simultaneously download their attendance and grading
to a central database.
-
Send e-mail directly out of 204 to SMTP without complicated USE logic and
generated JCL. By the same token, e-mail could be received by a User Language
application.
-
Communicate between Model 204 regions in peer to peer applications.
-
Retrieve user security or profile information from an LDAP server, or even
allow Model 204 to act as an LDAP server.
Summary
Janus Sockets makes it easy to leverage the substantial investment most
shops have made in their Model 204 applications into modern, networked
computing environments. With Janus Sockets, applications can be integrated
in a straightforward manner across platforms and standard TCP/IP protocols.
Model 204 applications can send information to and receive information
from other servers, applications, and devices that communicate across TCP/IP
networks. Conversely, devices, servers, and applications running on other
platforms on the network can send data to and extract data from Model 204.
Janus Sockets ships with some sample application code, including an e-mail interface. Other example socket interfaces can easily be cut and pasted from the documentation available on line, and modified by the customer for their environment.
Janus Sockets supports Model 204 version 4.2 and higher running on IBM
MVS, VM, and VSE operating systems.
|
|
