Corporate.Net Web Middleware Glue Binds Web App s IBM Transaction Server IBM's Transaction Server wowed us with the performance and features of its core services--including integrity assurance, load-balancing and dynamic routing. These core services, which we feel are the primary reason for choosing a middleware product, behaved reliably and flawlessly in our tests. However, we were disappointed that Transaction Server's GUI administrative tools didn't measure up to Microsoft's Transaction Server's tools in ease of use or number of administrative functions. Like KIVA's Enterprise Server, IBM's product reacted quickly and correctly when we added or removed network nodes. In one test, we deliberately made one of four DB2 for NT database servers disappear. Transaction Server made sure the other three machines picked up the workload, and it also (correctly) failed those transactions involving related multiple-database updates . This action affected tables that existed only on the vanished server. IBM has been in the middleware business a long time--even before the term middlew are was coined--and its experience shows. Its Transaction Servers, which run on OS/2 Warp and will run by press time on AIX and Windows NT platforms, were formerly called CICS for OS/2, CICS for AIX and CICS for NT. Transaction Server performed well as an enterprisewide coordinator and integrator of servers and clients, managing applications and data sources across our network. IBM's Transaction Server is a robust, scalable, application-oriented infrastructure for developing and using three-tier client/server business automation systems. Transaction Server is a TP monitor that ensures transaction integrity for transactions involving a set of related updates (all the updates succeed or all the updates fail and get rolled back). Our tests exercised its ability to allocate system resources to transaction-oriented applications, launch applications (both Ja va and C/C++-based) for processing transactions, initiate transactions within Lotus Notes (we used Notes/Domino 4.5) and balance workloads across Web application servers. Transaction Server stood up to our scrutiny. IBM bundles CICS Gateway for Lotus Notes and IBM CICS Internet Gateway with its Transaction Server products. The CICS Internet Gateway interfaces Web servers and host (mainframe or AS/400) legacy CICS applications, translating between HTML and 3270 data streams to let Web browsers display 3270 screens as if they were Web pages. The Gateway makes Transaction Server applications available to anyone running a Web browser, but does not include special levels of support for Java. We installed and tested Transaction Server's client "enablers" on DOS, OS/2, Windows95, Windows NT and Macintosh systems. An enabler provides CICS services to a client-based application component, letting that component initiate transactions for Transaction Server to monitor. We used Visual Basic and Delphi to program si mple, fat client desktop applications, registered these with Transaction Server, then sat back and watched while Transaction Server managed the transactions the se programs issued. We liked Transaction Server's programming language support. In addition to Visual Basic and Delphi, we used a range of development tools with Transaction Server, including C/C++, COBOL, PL/I, REXX, VisualAge Basic, SmallTalk and PowerBuilder. The IBM Transaction Server API, like that of Microsoft, has two basic entry points and is simple to incorporate into an application. IBM's complementary products for Transaction Server include Encina and MQSeries. Encina is a DCE-integrated (and RPC-based) transaction processing solution; MQSeries is a platform-neutral messaging facility. MQSeries uses a message queue, coupled with a transaction monitor, to free interbusiness developers from having to comply with one another's network infrastructure and applications. We tested both products with IBM's Transaction Server and found MQSerie s and Encina to be excellent add-ons to the basic Transaction Server environment. In the lab, MQSeries painlessly managed message streams between NT and OS/2 machines. Encina created the skeleton of a multiplatform business application after only a few hours of interface declaration. Transaction Server for OS/2 requires OS/2 2.1 or later, plus an additional 3 MB of RAM and 17 MB of disk space. The AIX version needs AIX 4.1 or later, running on an RS/6000 with at least 100 MB of RAM and 125 MB of available disk space. The system requirements for the NT version had not yet been determined at press time.

For a look at the Transparency of Middleware Internet Rx by Chris Lewis The Dawining of the Age of Java Management by Bruce Boardman Updated May 12, 1997