Using Custom Access Libraries
Custom access libraries can be a good alternative to a socket-based or message-based solution. Basically, you don't need to write any custom code on the mainframe (or you write only a small bit) and you use a special access library to send your requests. IBM, for example, makes a CICS gateway that lets you invoke transactions on a CICS system.
Because many of these libraries use native libraries, you can't use them from an EJB. You can, however, create an RMI or CORBA server that your EJBs can talk to. The server then uses the native library to talk to the mainframe.
As with socket-based solutions, custom libraries can't participate in EJB transactions, so you might have trouble synchronizing your data.
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