Chapter 6 Using Application Integrator with EAServer

Developing and deploying AI components

AI for CICS and stored procedures components are developed and deployed using the AI Component Builder. The AI Component Builder makes it easy to create components that invoke existing mainframe COBOL programs or database stored procedures, and deploy the components to EAServer. Each component contains a collection of methods, and each method executes a COBOL program or stored procedure.

You create methods in CICS components from COBOL COMMAREA definitions, which describe the inputs and outputs of COBOL programs.

You can automatically create methods in stored procedure components by using the AI Component Builder to browse a database and selecting stored procedures. You can also manually create methods in stored procedure components by entering information about stored procedures directly in the AI Component Builder. Methods for stored procedure components can execute stored procedures that reside in a database that is accessible through a JDBC driver.

A COBOL program from which you can create a component must meet these requirements:

It must be callable with a CICS link call so that the AI for CICS server can call the CICS program.
The CICS program COMMAREA cannot perform any screen or printer input or output, because components are completely nonvisual.
All input and output must be performed through the COMMAREA, because all method information for the component is retrieved from the COMMAREA.

AI components map COBOL and stored procedure datatypes to the datatypes supported in EAServer. EAServer uses interface definition language (IDL) to provide mappings between datatypes of different languages and object models.