Rocket Upgrades LegaSuite Integration for Mainframe SOA 
Rocket Software is shipping LegaSuite Integration 5.2, an upgrade to its Seagull Software unit’s integrated tools platform for SOA-enabling legacy applications and data. Upgrade adds drag-and-drop capabilities for service orchestration, CICS 4.1 support, and tools for Web 2.0 and database services.
Rocket Software is shipping LegaSuite Integration 5.2, an upgrade to its Seagull Software unit’s integrated tools platform for SOA-enabling legacy applications and data. Upgrade adds drag-and-drop capabilities for service orchestration, CICS 4.1 support, and tools for Web 2.0 and database services.
LegaSuite Integration 5.2’s single workbench for application integration aims to allow a variety of IT professionals to rapidly and non-invasively create SOA and web services from mainframe applications and data and let them run across IBM i, OpenVMS and Windows client/server platforms,
This latest updates come as customer interest is increasing for cost-effective and simple SOA-mainframe solutions, Sam Elias, Business Area Executive Worldwide for Seagull products at Rocket Software told IDN. 
“Over these last months, we’re seeing many more real SOA implementations for mainframe customers,” Elias said. ”It’s not simply kicking the tires. Customers are really seeing the value” in mainframe SOA projects, “so long as they are simple to understand, easy to accomplish and reliable.”
LegaSuite Integration has long provided customers non-invasive access to mainframe application screen logic, transaction logic, and data. Further, it allows non-mainframe developers to use the Eclipse development environment to easily service-enable mainframe assets
LegaSuite Integration 5.2 adds these features:
- A “macroflow modeler” to orchestrate services via drag-and-drop “Our micro-flow modeler allows for end-to-end web services orchestration,” Elias said. “We can truly provide web services across different platforms, and orchestrate to composite web services, adding new levels of reuse and functionality to existing services.”
- Support for IBM’s CICS Transaction Server V4.1, including support for near real-time visibility and access to mainframe data via event-driven functionality, ATOM feeds, and plug-ins to CICS Explorer -- “Our support for CICS 4.1 simplifies the way customers can manage their complex CICS environment, which also means they can do it with fewer and less experienced staff,” Elias told IDN. “When they monitor and maintain their CICSplex, they can also monitor the health of LegaSuite environment, and we also let customers create fine-grained services from their CICS resources.”
- New database service-building features -- Because an IT staff doesn’t need to know how to write [integration or process code], an organization’s existing personnel can easily learn and use the LegaSuite tools,” Elias said. Further, because LegaSuite comes as loosely-coupled modules, organizations can buy only those components they need, he said.
- Added Web 2.0 tooling and standards support -- “Modernization can come in different flavors, and our product lets customers attack it from a variety of points of view – rehosting, service enablement and even presentation layer updates via Web 2.0 front ends for employees, partners and customer portals,” Elias said. “This version reflects our ability to update LegaSuite with whatever the customer wants,” including WS-standards, XML or RESTful services for portals that run against their existing legacy assets, or completely new UIs that consolidates screens from the original application.
Inside LegaSuite Integration
LegaSuite Integration provides three (3) flexible server deployment options, including:
- Mainframe Resident: Runs on the mainframe in CICS, offering the highest performance possibilities. Invokes applications via COMMAREA (DPL), 3270 Bridge/FEPI or VSAM.
- Distributed: Runs on the mainframe in z/Linux or off the mainframe on distributed platforms like Linux, Windows, Sun Solaris, AIX, and HP-UX. Advantageous when your mainframe is outsourced or to reduce MIPS usage.
- Hybrid: A combination of the mainframe resident and distributed deployments. Allows you offload SOA processing to more cost-effective platforms (including specialty processors) while retaining the performance power of the mainframe.
Further, customers can change run-time architectures without redevelopment because all the tools are integrated and the run-time software is interoperable.
