Updating Rules for COBOL Generated Code to Use CICS Channels and Containers

Redpaper
Daniel Donnelly
Updating Rules for COBOL
Generated Code to Use CICS
Channels and Containers
IBM® WebSphere® ILOG Rules for COBOL generates a COBOL sub-program from the rules that have been externalized and managed in the ILOG Rules Repository. The externalization of business rules provides benefit to your business, as well as improves the efficiency of maintaining your COBOL applications. Corporations today continue to see value in running their core business applications on large-capacity mainframes. An organization's success depends largely upon its ability to respond quickly to today's complex, ever changing markets and regulatory climate. Businesses today need a Business Rule Management Systems (BRMS) solution that supports business changes and cycles far more effectively than traditional methods and takes direct advantage of business expertise.
A true BRMS provides the technology to manage business logic separately from application code with minimum disruption to the application when the business logic changes. This IBM RedpaperT describes how you can take COBOL code generated by WebSphere ILOG Rules for COBOL and modify it to use CICS® channels and containers. By wrapping the Rules for COBOL program, we demonstrate how CICS channels and containers can be used to remove the need to statically link a Rules for COBOL module with its calling programs. If a Rules for COBOL module is used by multiple calling modules you can reduce the
© Copyright IBM Corp. 2009. All rights reserved. ibm.com/redbooks 1amount of relinking that must be performed every time that a Rules for COBOL module changes. Therefore, instead of having to link the changed COBOL module into every single application that calls it, a single link step is performed to link the Rules for COBOL module into your Load Library. After the program associated with the Rules for COBOL module is reloaded, the changed code is instantly available to all applications that call it. An additional advantage of this method of structuring a Rules for COBOL generated program is that it does not have to run in the same CICS region as its calling program. Therefore, greater flexibility is allowed in how an application is architected. For example, multiple regions running the Rules for COBOL program can be used in conjunction with CICSPlex® System Manager Workload Management to route requests to maximize availability, optimize response times, and optimize the use of the capacity of the system on which the rules are running. CICSPlex System Manager Workload Management monitors the status and health of the regions and automatically routes requests to the most appropriate region. For example, if a region goes Short-on-Storage or reaches its MAXTASK limit, CICSPlex System Manager Workload Management automatically stops routing rules requests to that region.
This document briefly describes WebSphere ILOG Rules for COBOL, as well as CICS channels and containers. It then goes on to describe how to create a wrapper program for a Rules for COBOL generated program, and how to modify an associated calling program to allow the use of CICS channels and containers.
WebSphere ILOG Rules for COBOL
WebSphere ILOG Rules for COBOL is an extension to WebSphere ILOG JRules. It allows you to create and manage business rules that are based on COBOL data structures. Business rules can be authored using business terminology and then deployed across multiple platforms. By using Rules for COBOL, business rules can be deployed as a COBOL module for use by mainframe applications running in CICS, IMST, or batch environments. It is used in conjunction with a number of other components to provide a complete BRMS solution. Two of the most important components with which it interacts are WebSphere ILOG Rule Studio and WebSphere ILOG Rule Team Server. Rule Studio is an Eclipse-based environment that is used to develop and deploy business rules. In Rule Studio, rule developers define the business vocabulary to be used, write rules based on that vocabulary, and deploy the rules. Rule Team Server is a Web-based interface that allows business users and others to collaborate in creating, modifying, and deploying business rules.
To create business rules using Rules for COBOL, a Business Object Model (BOM) is created based on a COBOL copybook that describes the data
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