Is IBM planning on including any XML capabilities within CICS?
IBM has added, or will be adding, XML support within CICS in a number of areas. During 2000, IBM announced the XML Toolkit for OS/390. Although the Java implementation of this does work under CICS, it performs poorly. IBM’s intention is to enhance this toolkit with parsers that work effectively under CICS (although it may not be based on the Xerces parser). Whenever IBM makes an efficient parser available under CICS, HostBridge will use it In March 2000, IBM made available a beta version of an XML feature for CICS Transaction Gateway (CTG). This feature allowed a remote program to invoke a CICS COMMAREA transaction using XML (essentially, an XML to ECI gateway). IBM terminated the beta program at the end of 2000, and has not announced future plans. It is reasonable to expect that IBM will add a permanent feature to CTG that allow it to accept XML requests and map them to CICS ECI calls. Note that such a feature will NOT facilitate access to terminal-oriented applications. (ECI is the C
