IBM Licensed Programs: Application Development Products 647
IBM Licensed Programs: Application Development Products
Delivering e-business Solutions
Developing e-business solutions is quickly becoming the next strategic direction as
companies see the potential for cost savings, better customer service, and streamlined
business processes. This is possible only if the enormous value of the existing IT assets can
be easily brought into a Web-centric world. But the Web is an unforgiving new market, where
your competitor is just one click away. Building self-serve systems that do not provide
adequate response and availability can be more damaging than not entering the market at all!
IBM is leveraging its experience in delivering highly available, scalable, and secure systems
to equip this new world with the correct infrastructure and tools. The result is a set of products
and architectures to support the creation and deployment of end-to-end multi-tiered
e-business systems. If we think of an e-business system as a logical 3-tier solution, IBM
WebSphere Application Server provides the runtime environment for tier-2, WebSphere
Studio provides the tools for Web-site management and page composition, and the
VisualAge products allow professional programmers to rapidly create transactional data
servers and business logic. In this context, VisualAge Generator plays a central role for the
development of new third-tier transactional servers. These servers must guarantee high
performance and transaction volumes. The servers must also reach a variety of legacy
platforms and data. To do this, the servers automatically generate the code necessary to use
their services in a servlet/JSP component dynamic HTML context. This is possible today
through three facilities:
• Web Transaction Rapid Application Development (RAD)
The Web Transaction RAD facility is an innovative and simple methodology that allows
traditionally skilled programmers to develop, test, and deploy multi-tiered Web systems
without having to deal with the complexities of tier-2, such as designing and developing
servlets and JSP that manage and contain data provided by tier-3 servers (mapping data
between Java objects and flat data structures, understanding API for host connectivity,
and so forth), and manage sessions and state. Using this approach, developers can
specify their system at a logical level and let VisualAge generate both tier-2 (Java and
JSP component) and tier-3 (C++ or Cobol) code that implements those specifications.
• Integration with VisualAge for Java
The VisualAge Generator Developer workbench is seamlessly integrated with the award
winning VisualAge for Java workbench to provide the most powerful e-business Integrated
Development Environment (IDE) in the industry. Programmers can develop and test Java
clients (applications, applets, or servlets) using either Java or 4GL specifications, or a mix
of both, easily exchange data content between Java variables and VAGen data items,
cross invoke business logic implemented in the two languages, and animate both source
definitions in a seamless interactive debugging environment. Tier-3 server logic, specified
in 4GL, can be defined and tested together and seamlessly with the client prior to the
generation of C++ or COBOL for the target runtime. A full end-to-end multi-tiered
Java-to-any-server solution can easily be developed, rapidly and without necessarily
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