What does HostBridge provide that is not already in CICS TS 1.3?
HostBridge XML-enables CICS terminal-oriented transactions and/or COMMAREA programs. CICS TS does not do this. Also, CICS TS does not allow you to send an HTTP request to CICS to invoke a COMMAREA program. The IBM solution would be to use CICS Transaction Gateway. Our customers asked us to add COMMAREA support to HostBridge because they did not want to use CTG. If all you are using CTG for is to allow a Java program to communicate with a CICS COMMAREA program, then HostBridge may offer you numerous advantages. IBM provides a “template” facility which allows CICS transactions to be accessible via an HTML interface (not XML). Customers have had found it to be slow and buggy. Because HostBridge generates XML, our customers are fee to use any client or server-based GUI design tools to handle presentation-related matters.
Related Questions
- Can I use InterTest/CICS (from Computer Associates) or XPEDITER (from Compuware) to debug a transaction invoked through HostBridge?
- Can a CICS application programmer tell, in their application code, that a transaction has been invoked via HostBridge?
- What does HostBridge provide that is not already in CICS TS 1.3?
