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Components of the ZMF Web Services Environment

The ZMF Web Services API is intended for "roll your own" use by Web-savvy customers across a variety of environments. Some standard components of the ZMF Web Services environment are installed on the host with the base ChangeMan ZMF product. Others vary greatly across sites according to the requirements of the customer. Because few assumptions about the application environment can be made in advance, the installation and use of the ZMF Web Services are intended to be tailored extensively by the customer.

The following components are required by the ChangeMan ZMF Web Services API:

  • ZMF XML Services — The XML Services API to ChangeMan ZMF must be enabled on the host before installing ZMF Web Services support. See the ChangeMan ZMF Installation Guide for instructions on enabling external access to the XML Services.

  • SERNET — The mainframe communications front-end for ChangeMan ZMF manages TCP/IP connectivity between ChangeMan ZMF and the ZMF Connector plug-in that resides on your Web Services application server. (See the description of the ZMF Connector plug-in) SERNET also supervises the ZMF XML Services request/response cycle and routes requests across multiple ZMF started tasks. SERNET is automatically installed with ChangeMan ZMF.

  • Web application server — A Web application server, such as Apache Tomcat or IBM WebSphere Application Server, services requests and shares resources among multiple Web clients. The application server might include a native HTTP server or be front-ended by an external HTTP server, as needed to optimize security and performance. It invokes the ZMF Connector plug-in to provide service connectivity between the mainframe and the Web. Any Web Services application server that supports the Apache Axis SOAP library should in principle be compatible with the ChangeMan ZMF Web Services API. You must install and configure the application server before you install the ZMF Web Services API.

  • Apache Axis SOAP engine — The Apache eXtensible Interaction System (Axis) is an open-source SOAP message processing engine and Web Services function library based on J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition). It is installed as a plug-in to the Web Services application server. In addition to a SOAP parser, the Axis library includes utilities for generating Java classes from Web Service Description Language files (WSDLs) and for monitoring TCP/IP packets. Axis is supported by many Web Services application servers, including Apache Tomcat, BEA WebLogic, Borland Enterprise Server, JBoss, Macromedia Cold Fusion MX, Oracle Web Services Manager, and (as an alternate SOAP engine) IBM WebSphere Application Server. The ZMF Connector plugin requires Axis. It is supplied by the ChangeMan ZMF installer and is installed on the Web Services application server platform.

  • ZMF Connector — The ZMF Connector plug-in is a Java servlet that manages connectivity between a Web Services application server on the network and SERNET on the mainframe. On inbound requests, it extracts ZMF XML Services payloads from their SOAP envelope, validates them, then passes them on to the chosen ZMF instance on the mainframe. On outbound replies, it encapsulates ZMF XML Services payloads within a SOAP envelope and passes them to a particular Web Services client application. The ChangeMan ZMF installer supplies the ZMF Connector plug-in and installs it on the Web Services application server platform.

  • WSDL (Web Service Description Language) files — The ZMF Web Services API WSDLs describe the SERNET and ChangeMan ZMF services. They provide XML Schema specifications for data types and allowed values, as well as SOAP XML extensions that specify bindings of the abstract services to specific SOAP messages and Web application servers. A variety of code generators and development tools take WSDLs as input to assist Web client development. The ChangeMan ZMF installer supplies the ZMF WSDLs and installs them on the Web application server or on a separate development system, as needed.

  • Web client developer tools — Standalone tools or integrated development environments (IDEs) and plug-ins of your choice can take WSDL specifications as input, parse the XML, and generate Java code stubs and/or interactive fill-in-the-blank Web client prototypes as output. Open-source Web Services tools are available at no charge, such as Eclipse (for Java development).

    Note

    Because the ZMF Web Services do not build in a session management mechanism, Web Services development and testing tools such as soapUI will not execute ZMF Web Services calls successfully from the basic API WSDLs supplied with the ChangeMan ZMF installer.

    You can find further information about Web Services tools for the Eclipse IDE online at http://www.eclipse.org/webtools/ws/.