Web 2.0 Meets the Mainframe

Why should mainframe folks care about Web 2.0? Increasingly Web 2.0 is permeating IT. At first glance, it's easy to disregard this as another fad that the mainframe crowd will have to weather. In reality though, Web 2.0 means finding new ways to connect information. Not only should the z/Series be involved in this shift but it has the potential to lead by exposing enterprise services to distributed software in a scalable and secure manner. This session will describe Web 2.0 and show how mainframe systems could be leveraged in this new technology.

Transcript

1. Web 2.0 Meets The Mainframe Matthew Finlayson IBM STG February 26, 2008 Session 8458
2. 2 Agenda • What is Web 2.0? • Expert Opinions • Examples • Common Technologies • Tagging • Taxonomy vs. Folksonomy • Philosophy • Output • Augmenting Traditional Approaches • Representational State Transfer • URI's and Collections • Representations of Resources • Methods for acting on Resources
3. 3 Agenda Continued • Why do you want Web 2.0 on the Mainframe? • CICS Web Support and Web 2.0 • IMS Info 2.0 and Web 2.0 • DB2 pureXML and Web 2.0 • Outstanding Questions
4. 4 What is Web 2.0? • "Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform." • Web 2.0 Compact Definition: Trying Again - Tim O'Reilly • "Web 2.0 is a knowledge-oriented environment where human interactions generate content that is published, managed and used through network applications in a service-oriented architecture.“ • World 2.0 - Dario de Judicibus (IBM social-networking analyst)•
5. 5 Hrrrmmmm.... • “Web 1.0 was all about connecting people. It was an interactive space, and I think Web 2.0 is of course a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means. If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people.” • Tim Berners-Lee
6. 6 Aha! • “But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along.” • Tim Berners-Lee
7. 7 Great, do you have examples? Tagging (“folksonomy”) Directories (“taxonomy”) Syndication Stickiness Wikis Content Management Systems Participation Publishing Blog Personal Website Wikipedia Britannica Online BitTorrent Mp3.com Flickr Ofoto Google AdSense DoubleClick Web 2.0 Web 1.0
8. 8 Zeitgeist • Web 2.0 improves the way users interact with each other, and adds new technologies that provide a richer user experience. • The focus on both improved usage and improved technology is why there is confusion about what Web 2.0 means. • What we want to examine is interfacing with the technology. Once that is in place the social aspects will come.
9. 9 The three Software Patterns driving Web 2.0 • User-driven adoption • Value on demand • Low cost of entry • Public infrastructure • Tight feedback loop between providers and consumers Software as a SERVICE Service, not software COMMUNITY mechanisms • Recommendations • Social networking features • Tagging • User comments • Community rights management Users add value SIMPLE user interface and data services • Responsive UIs (AJAX)• • Feeds (Atom, RSS)• • Simple extensions • Mashups (REST APIs)• Easy to use, easy to remix Web 2.0
10. 10 Common Web 2.0 technologies • Organize content by tagging not taxonomy • Share your expertise by blogging and bookmarks • Engage colleagues through real-time broadcasts COMMUNITY SIMPLE § Richer interaction with AJAX § Lightweight integration using REST style services § Unlock data by syndication protocols
11. 11 Taxonomy VS Folksonomy taxo folkso nomy classification people management
12. 12 Philosophy Differences Personal Vocabulary Defined vocabulary Expansive Restrictive Discovery Navigation Good Enough Accurate Just do it Process to add new Meaning for the reader Meaning per the Author Bottom-up Top-down Democratic creation Central control
13. 13 Taxonomy VS Folksonomy Tag Store DOC WWW DOC DOC Distributed Storage tag1, tag2 tag3, tag4 tag1, tag4 Put Tags Get Tags tag4
14. 14 Tags in Folksonomy (Tag Cloud)•
15. 15 Final Notes on Tagging • “On the web, it might be interesting to see what other people are bookmarking, but because it's not a defined community you may not care too much. In the enterprise it's different. We find that sets of items bookmarked by colleagues get high click-through rates, showing that they can be more useful than compilations our search engine finds. That's because there has been a relevant selection process to determine what matters.” • IBM Research - Irene Greif
16. 16 What is ReST? • REST is the acronym for Representational State Transfer • It is the architectural model on which the World Wide Web is based • Principles of REST • Resource centric approach • All relevant resources are addressable via URIs • Uniform access via HTTP – GET, POST, PUT, DELETE • Content type negotiation allows retrieving alternative representations from same URI • REST style services • are easy to access from code running in web browsers, any other client or servers • can serve multiple representations of the same resource
17. 17 Resources • The web is built on an architectural style called REST. The idea is built around the Uniform Resource Indicator (URI). • Every resource you want to address should have it's own URI. You can think of a URI as a noun. • In addition to having URIs to every resource you want to manipulate you may want some special resources two important ones are collections and search interfaces.
18. 18 Collections • http://example.com/employee • Name • Serial Number • Phone Number • Email Address • http://example.com/employees • List of employees • You can't actually GET a resource, instead you ask for a representation of that resource.
19. 19 Representation • HTML, XML, images, sound, and movies are all potential formats that could be used. • For our example let's look at XML • <employee xmlns='http://example.org/my-example-ns/'> • <name>Full name goes here.</name> • <title>Persons title goes here.</title> • <phone-number>Phone number goes here.</phone-number> • </employee>
20. 20 Representation Continued • Since each employee will have his or her own URI with all the details there, our list will only include that URI. • <employee-list xmlns='http://example.org/my-example-ns/'> • <employee-ref href="URI of the first employee"/> • Full name of the first employee goes here. • </employee> • <employee-ref href="URI of employee #2"/> • Full name • </employee> • ... • <employee-ref href="URI of employee #N"/> • Full name • </employee> • </employee-list>
21. 21 What are the Methods in ReST? HTTP Method POST GET PUT DELETE CRUD Action CREATE RETRIEVE UPDATE DELETE Description Create Resource Retrieve Representation Update Resource Delete a Resource
22. 22 What Methods on each URI? Resource Employee Employee Employee All Employees All Employees Method GET PUT DELETE GET POST Status Codes 200, 301, 410 200, 301, 401, 410 200, 204 200, 301 200, 400
23. 23 How does Web 2.0 meet Mainframe? • A manufacturer using IMS Info 2.0 • Increase the profitability of their IMS transactions by enabling their customers to access real time stock information. • Development is almost trivial (Web 2.0 in action). • There is more reuse available though! • These transactions are likely to get more consumers if I offer a lightweight API rather than forcing everything through SOAP • SOAP is anathema to many Web 2.0 developers, and IBM definitely needs to position z for Web 2.0. • IBM needs to think more about XML data sources not just XML Web Services.
24. 24 Semi-RESTful - CICS Web Support • CICS Web support is a collection of CICS services that supports direct access to CICS application programs from Web browsers. • Applications can use CICS Web support to: • Map a URL to a request for CICS services. • Interpret HTTP requests. • Construct HTTP responses. • Build HTML output for display by a Web Browser. • CICS supports HTTP/1.0. Unpredictable results can occur if you use HTTP/1.1-specific headers.
25. 25 RESTful - IMS Info 2.0 • IMS Info 2.0 is an alpha works project for Web2.0 • Direct connection to IMS with no itermediary • Exposes the transaction (resource) through SOAP and XML • RSS • ATOM • Plain Old XML (POX)• • The two product requirements are IMS 10 and Rational Developer for System Z • This technology builds on the XML adaptor for IMS which was also used to build SOAP support into IMS
26. 26 Questions to You • What data do IMS and CICS have that would be of interest to WEB 2.0 via REST only interfaces? • Its exciting imagine that you can easily stream thousands of terabytes of mainframe data out through a connector using only XML/HTTP • How it is accessed, • by whom, • for what, • how long, • etc. • Are stateless get / put requests useful on the mainframe?
27. 27 Question / Comments
28. 28 Backup!
29. 29 DB2 and pureXML • First topic on this particular slide, Text is 24 point Arial • Sub-topic one • Second sub-topic that really has a lot of very long text and takes up most of the slide • Sub-sub- topic, Text is 14 point Arial • Second major topic on this slide • Third major topic • Final topic