Re: Cobol to Java communication

[Dieter Bender <dieter.bender@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Tim,

First of all I would recommend to avoid COBOL and java in the same 
environment; you will get threading issues that are not really solvable. With 
other words: stay away from JNI in both directions. Calling COBOL from Java 
using JNI is rather complicated to implement for COBOL and calling Java from 
COBOL using JNI tends to eat up all your ressources (same with the os400 java 
command); you would start a JVM in every AS400 Job using such a call. If one 
JVM uses only 100 MB memory ... (BTW: same situation for Java <-> RPG).

What are the alternatives? 

Java to COBOL:
Stored procedures where already mentioned and I would prefer this solution; 
its not very portable but it should be as portable as as400 COBOL programs. 
Another way is Tollbox program call, but the AS400 Object you will need seems 
to be more expensive as a JDBC Connection and you will need a JDBC Connection 
Pool anyway.

COBOL to Java:
I would use a Java written Server, providing the possibility to call Java 
methods. The communication could be based on sockets or DTAQs. On the COBOL 
side one COBOL program would deal with the issues to use this server. The 
asynchronous behavior could be changed to a synchronous, by waiting to the 
response in a dedicated response DTAQ.

Dieter Bender

On Mittwoch, 24. März 2004 17:39, Tim Gosnell wrote:
> I'm a java developer with very little experience on the 400 or with COBOL
> so please be kind.
>
> I'm putting together some preliminary documentation for our new project.
> I'm currently exploring the ways that ILE COBOL (lots of ILE programmers in
> house) and Java can communicate in a bi-directional manner.
>
> We have transactions that must be synchronous, but not every transaction
> must.
>
> So far the only synchronous method I've found is via stored procedures. 
> Are there additional synchronous methods of bi-directional communication?
>
> For the asynchronous transactions, we're looking into data queues and
> MQSeries.  Is there anything else I should consider here?
>
> Just looking for a little input/guidance...
>
> Tim
>
>
>
>
>
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Dieter Bender


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