CICS Native IIOP Interface

CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) is a distributed object platform. With CORBA, all that a client needs to know when it requests an object is it's name and interface. The Object Request Broker (a CORBA component) intercepts the call and finds an object to satisfy the request. The client does not need to know the location of the object, how to route the request or how results will be returned.

CORBA uses IIOP (Internet Inter-ORB Protocol) to pass information between objects.

CICS TS for OS/390 version 1.3 supports inbound requests to Java application programs that use the IIOP protocol. This allows a CORBA compliant client to access CICS objects. The CICS object can either be defined in object terms and written in Java, or it can be a Java program that invokes non-object oriented CICS programs.

In terms of CICS Internet connectivity, client applications will usually run as Java programs either on a browser (as an applet) or an a web server (as a servlet).

The IIOP interface flow is as follows:

• When a request arrives, the listener starts the CICS receiver program.
• The receiver transaction starts a CICS transaction and passes it the inbound IIOP request data.
• The started transaction links to the CICS module DFJIIOP. As DFJIIOP can be in another CICS region, this link provides an opportunity to perform workload balancing.
• DFJIIOP invokes the requested method of the target object and returns the reply to the sender of the request.

Previous Page