Addressing OLTP Solutions with CICS: The Transaction Server ... - Ibm

By using common application programming interfaces (APIs), applications
developed on one platform can run on others.
• Interoperability
Distributed applications can work together with the common communication
protocols.
• Evolution
Taking on new techologies and new standards for protocols and interfaces
becomes easy with modular designs and well-specified internal interfaces of
the truly open system.
• Investment protection
Existing systems and staff skills are the defense against failure of
mission-critical OLTP applications on which the enterprise depends.
Therefore the current investments in those systems and skills must be
protected and preserved. In other words, there is no obsolescence, only
enhancement through the use of open distributed OLTP systems to operate
with the existing proprietary computing platforms.
• Overall cost reductions
Through the focus on improving return on investment, making more
productive use of ITs, and careful selection of appropriate platforms for the
OLTP applications, the gradual planned shift to open distributed systems will
generate overall cost reductions.
• Ease of reconfiguration
The system has to be easily reconfigurable to match the ever-changing
needs of the business.
• Workload management
The ability to distribute and balance the workload among all transaction
processing servers is becoming important because it enables the delivery of
consistent service levels to end users.
• Multivendor support
Heterogeneous multivendor systems and networks are becoming the norm.
Support for multivendor environments is a must for any serious players in
the OLTP market.
• Coping with business changes
Business changes demand corresponding and timely adjustments in the
system.
• Computing resource sharing
Some of the computing resources are still expensive; sharing them among
applications and end users makes business sense.
• Data sharing
8 CICS for AIX as the Transaction Server
Data sharing enables different applications from distributed sites to use the
same data. It eliminates the duplication of data that creates complexity in
data management.
In Table 1 on page 9 we tabulate the above requirements with respect to the
specific disciplines to show how well these disciplines meet the requirements.