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by Joel Klebanoff
Published 05/24/2007
Much has been made of the benefits of a
service-oriented architecture, but, according to Chris Lategan, CEO of ADVANCED BusinessLink, "For a long time
now, when most RPG folks hear 'SOA' they think, 'that's a Java thing' or 'that's
a .NET thing, it's not something that's applicable to me.'" Strategi SOA from
ADVANCED BusinessLink turns that thinking on its head.
The first thing to
understand about Strategi SOA is how it differs from other products that claim
to move legacy applications to a service-oriented architecture. Other products
are usually screen scrapers that put wrappers around the code for existing green
screens, but this approach defeats the intent of SOA. Services are supposed to
be single-purpose chunks of code. This makes them broadly callable by any
service-oriented application that needs that discrete unitary function. In
contrast, screen scrapers simply make the screen's code, including all of the
underlying complexity, callable as a service so it can be employed more easily
to create modern interfaces as seen on Web applications and kiosks. There are
benefits to this approach, but it forgoes the wide-ranging reusability and
platform-neutral modularity hallmarks of true service-oriented
architectures.
Strategi SOA is different. It implements an enterprise
service bus (ESB) on a System i server to provide a pure, native SOA
environment. This allows programmers using any language—RPG, COBOL, CL or
any other System i language—to create services that may be called by
applications written in any language and running on any platform. Developers can
do this using straight RPG, without the need for a proprietary IDE.
With
Strategi SOA, applications written in RPG and any other System i language can
easily call any service running on any platform. It doesn't matter whether those
services are Java or .NET-based.
Using Strategi SOA, the services that
RPG developers employ in their applications don't even have to run on the
organization's servers. They can be services that have been made available by
other organizations for general use over the Internet, such as Google's search
service, or perhaps one that accesses real-time currency exchange rates and
converts a value from one currency to another.
Because, with a service it
is the functionality that matters, not the language in which it is written,
Strategi SOA allows RPG and other System i "legacy"-language programmers to work
friction free along with other developers who might be using more "modern"
languages, such as Java or C#. The developer who writes a call to a service
neither has to know nor care what language was used to create it. The only
concern is what the service does.
For example, it is a trivial exercise
to use an RPG-based service in a Java application. It becomes equally easy to
use a Java-based service in an RPG application. Taking advantage of this
characteristic, a service-oriented application is built not as a monolithic
string of code, but rather as a collection of services that are called as
necessary. By enabling this service-oriented methodology, Strategi SOA allows
RPG programmers to shed the "legacy" label that is too often attached to
them.
When using Strategi SOA to move legacy application functionality
into a service-oriented architecture, it is not necessary to convert everything
at once. In fact, ADVANCED BusinessLink advises against that course. "We very
strongly discourage the all-or-nothing approach," says Lategan. "We put people
through a brief training—architecture and programmer training—and
then we tell them, 'With every project you do from now on, fashion that
application as a series of services. Don't do anything different from what is on
your to-do list now, just do it the new way. Over the course of a few years,
you'll end up in a very different place.'"
Using a service-oriented
approach, companies can quickly develop modern application interfaces that are
difficult, if not impossible, using traditional RPG programming techniques. "The
great thing is that, after three days of training, they [developers] can come
back with a brand-new Web application, where previously they weren't capable of
building one," explains Lategan. "They can give executives inquiries on all of
their PDAs and cell phones, which they couldn't do before. They can put a kiosk
in the foyer. They can build a Web presence directly from RPG."
Small Footprint, High Performance
Strategi SOA runs within a small footprint on a
System i server and doesn't consume interactive resources. As a result, it
should run on your existing System i server without the need for an upgrade. In
addition, according to ADVANCED BusinessLink, applications running under
Strategi SOA run faster than under any other Web application
server.
Applications running under Strategi SOA are automatically
distributed in nature. If you have a cluster of System i servers or LPARs,
Strategi SOA can automatically "glue" them together to make them work as one big
grid machine.
In addition to offering the Strategi SOA software, ADVANCED
BusinessLink also provides consulting on two levels. One service helps
organizations to build the business case for SOA. The other helps to construct a
roadmap for the SOA rollout.
ADVANCED BusinessLink has found that,
because programmers use existing skills to build services that run under
Strategi SOA, the training requirements are minimal. Two education courses also
are available from the company. A one-day course teaches system architects about
service-oriented architectures. A three-day course teaches programmers how to
build applications as a series of services rather than as a monolithic program.
ADVANCED BusinessLink's Strategi SOA is a member of the company's
Strategi suite of products, which also includes solutions for Web-enablement and
mobility. Founded in 1987 in Sydney, Australia, ADVANCED BusinessLink now has
its headquarters in the Seattle, Washington, area, but the company maintains a
sales and support office in Sydney, as well as in Paris, London, and Kuala
Lumpur. The company has more than 500 customers in 22 countries. For more
information, contact ADVANCED BusinessLink. Contact information is provided
below.
Joel
Klebanoff is a consultant, a writer, and president of Klebanoff Associates, Inc., a Toronto,
Canada-based marketing communications firm, and author of BYTE-ing Satire. Joel has 25 years
experience working in IT, first as a programmer/analyst and then as a marketer.
He holds a Bachelor of Science in computer science and an MBA, both from the
University of Toronto. Contact Joel at joel@klebanoff.com.
ADVANCED
BusinessLink
5808 Lake Washington
Blvd.
Suite
100
Kirkland, WA
98033
USA
Web:
www.businesslink.com
Email:
sales@businesslink.com
Tel:
425.602.4777
Fax: 425.602.4789
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