High level help needed... (paul??) 1

[rtgordon]

I have an NT queue that is communicating with a queue on a VSE mainframe. The NT programming is done through a proprietary application called Extricity Alliance.

What I would like to do is get away from relying on the third party application to do the communication because with the product line that we have, there is not a clear way to populate a response page from an http request.

I am trying to put together an application that will put a message from an http post or submit, and get the reply from the host system. Then, populate the response page with the data received.

What is the least painful way to approach this. I am running IIS and SQL Server on NT. Please correct me if I am wrong... This is what I have come to understand so far:

To use activeX, the mqclient must be installed on each client, browser security must be changed on each client(not a good thing).

I could use servlets or jsp pages in conjunction with jms to accomplish it, but not with IIS.

I could write a java app using jms, but I wouldn't know how to tie it into the web application.

I was hoping someone would give me a little assistance and point me in the right direction. Ideally, I would like to do some sort of asp implementation if it is possible.

 

[pmeekin]

Well, I don't claim to be an expert in all (any?) of these areas so any opinion I give will be biased towards my own experiences. So with that caveat...

Firstly, accept my condolences for having to use VSE . Secondly, accept my condolences for having to use NT ;-).

If you are determined to use HTTP then you don't need (and can't use) any client-side MQ coding so ActiveX, JMS etc are irrelevant for this part (we'll ignore tunnelling MQ requests over HTTP for obvious reasons!). I'm assuming that the backend server is on the VSE system?

Overall it sounds like you want an HTTP request to be received by IIS and then passed to the relevant 'plug-in' which invokes the necessary MQ calls to the (local NT?) qmgr which sends them to the VSE qmgr (or maybe uses a client connection direct to VSE), retrieves the replies and formats them into a nice HTML (HTTP?) format before returning it to IIS for transmission back to the browser. Is this correct? If so, your question is, which 'plug-in' do I use in my middle tier?

IBM would say, use Websphere with IIS (athough any App Server would do). Send the HTTP request to a servlet, JSP or EJB and call the MQ stuff from there, returning the data as a nicely formatted HTML page etc. I understand that the MQ Internet Gateway did this type of thing too but I don't know if this is even still available. If you haven't got an Application Server to hand (or don't want/can't use one) then I guess you're stuck with CGI or ASP.

For relatively simple transactions this isn't too bad although be careful if you want to connect to multiple qmgrs. CGI can be written in pretty much any supported language so you could use JMS etc if you wanted.

I don't know enough about ASP to comment on what you can/can't do with MQ.

Sorry if this is a bit rambling but it's a very wide area and the decisions you make are ultimately dictated by what you like/feel comfortable with/can afford/have available etc.

Cheers,
Paul

 

[rtgordon]

You basically summarized what I am trying to accomplish except, I would not need the data formatted on before sending it back to the local NT machine.

I have come to understand that IIS does not support JSP or servlets. I have tested some .jsp pages with code out on the box, and all it did was spit the java code out to the browser like HTML.

So, I need something running along with ASP to get handle the JSP and servlet requests. JRun? Any other alternatives?

 

[rtgordon]

I really do appreciate the help, and your condolences are accepted B-)

Thanks,
gordon

 

[rtgordon]

Have to ask... I realize that this may not be your forte, and it gets away from MQSeries, but I have to ask. I started reasearching using cgi like you suggested. I grabbed activeperl, and began trying to get something to work. I used the HelloWorld program. I can't get the thing to work because I am at a loss for how to use perl to set my classpath on NT to run the application. I can execute both perl and cgi scripts, but can't figure out how to execute the java class file.

Thanks,
gordon

 

[pmeekin]

Hi,

Well, perl is something I haven't got around to learning yet although I know you definitely can do MQ and CGI with it.

The last time I wrote a simple Java CGI program (on an IBM mainframe of all things!) I'm sure I just used a URL along the lines of:

http://my.host.com/cgi/java

myclass parm1 parm2

Failing that, you could always use a CGI program written in C.

I've just reread your last followup and it looks like there is a bit of confusion. I'm suggesting that you use a CGI program (written in perl, C, Java/JMS or whatever) to BE the application - i.e. to do the MQ bit and return the results as HTML written to stdout.

But I don't want to try and sell CGI as being the way to go - it has many drawbacks, particularly in terms of scalability and possibly performance. I think JRun would be fine as an app server but I'm speaking from second hand experience here. The problem as far as I can see (from my extremely limited knowledge of it) is that there doesn't seem to be a way to call MQ functions from ASP. If MQ connectivity is fundamental then I'd rethink the use of ASP very carefully.

To summarise, you need an incoming http request to startup a program which can make MQ calls and return an HTML page to the browser. The options for the program are:

- .jsp, servlet or EJB (supplied by a 'plug-in' App Server such as Websphere, Weblogic or (I believe) JRun.

- CGI program written in pretty much any language that can invoke MQSeries

- ASP, which probably isn't an option as it can't call MQSeries. Maybe it can call a program in a language which is supported by MQ?

There are other more obscure things (CORBA anyone?) but these are the main possibilites, I'd say.

CGI is pretty simple but an App Server gives greater flexibility.

Hope this helps,
Paul

 

[rtgordon]

What you said is what I have come to understand. it may not have been clear in my last post, but what I was trying to do was use a perl script to launch a java program. It was a very simple example, but I was not able to get it to work.

I did find an inexpensive servlet/jsp engine that claims to run in IIS.

http://www.caucho.com

Ever heard of this one?

Once again, thanks for your time.

gordon