STILLWATER, OK (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) — HostBridge Technology, a provider of integration software that XML-enables CICS Transaction Server applications, today announced it has been granted U.S. Patent Number 6,981,257 B2 on the techniques underlying its primary software product – also referred to as HostBridge. The granting of this patent validates the unique and innovative nature of the HostBridge approach to integration, while protecting its core technology. This patent also protects HostBridge customers by ensuring that they will have unimpeded access to best-of-breed CICS integration technology.
CICS Transaction Server is IBM’s premier mainframe-based transaction processing system which, according to industry sources, is used by organizations to process billions of transactions per day with a commercial value of trillions of dollars per week. The HostBridge patent, which was filed on January 18, 2002 and granted on December 27, 2005, formally describes “a system, method and apparatus to facilitate the invocation of existing CICS BMS transactions and deliver the executed transaction output to a requesting application as a standardized XML document.”
BMS transactions are the largest category of terminal-oriented transactions used by CICS TS customers. Building upon a CICS-based facility which intercepts the flow of control between a user transaction and traditional screen-handling facilities, HostBridge replaces the use of terminal-oriented data streams with XML documents. In doing so, HostBridge eliminates the need for ‘screen scraping’ – a brittle integration technique that limits many integration solutions because it scales poorly. HostBridge also does not require any changes to the existing CICS applications.
The HostBridge patent covers any integration solution that has these characteristics:
– Supports access to CICS BMS applications.
– Relies upon a CICS-based mechanism to intercept the flow of terminal input and output to/from the application.
– Uses XML to express the application’s output.
“The CICS landscape is littered with integration tools based on screen-scraping techniques,” said Russ Teubner, CEO of HostBridge Technology and co-inventor of the HostBridge patent. “Integrations based on these tools are largely disposable, because they are difficult to maintain, break easily and don’t scale well to support high-volume transaction environments. We were the first to recognize that there was a better approach to CICS integration, and the first to deliver it to the CICS community five years ago. Our confidence in the value of our approach to integration led us to file for a patent. The granting of this patent validates what our customers already know – that HostBridge offers an innovative approach to creating high-performance, resilient CICS integrations that are based in industry standards. There is nothing else on the market like HostBridge, and now that we have earned a patent for our approach, there never will be.”
HostBridge Product Background
Version 1 of the HostBridge product, launched immediately after the Patent application was filed in 2002, XML-enabled CICS BMS applications. Since the initial release, HostBridge has enhanced its product to support all types of CICS applications and data sources (not just BMS) and make them available as XML documents or web services.
HostBridge Extended (HBX), which was announced as part of HostBridge version 4, is a CICS-based business process automation engine. According to Teubner, “in order to build a web service or a BPM operation out of existing CICS transactions, something must manage the ‘micro-flows’ between multiple transactions. Automating the micro-flows outside the mainframe is an implementation and performance nightmare. Our CICS-based process automation engine allows system architects, business process designers and application developers to build CICS-based web services using the industry standard ECMAScript language.”
Also known as JavaScript, ECMAScript is the most widely used scripting language in the world. Continued Teubner, “since HostBridge scripts are compiled and run on the mainframe, run-time efficiency is outstanding. Furthermore, our exploitation of JavaScript within HostBridge Extended sets the stage for CICS to become a first-class provider of services to AJAX-enabled web applications.”
About HostBridge Technology
HostBridge Technology develops and markets its patented, CICS-based integration software products. The company’s primary products are HostBridge and HostBridge Extended. Together, these products allow organizations to expose their existing mainframe-based applications and data as business services within a services oriented architecture (SOA). HostBridge products are designed to exploit the ongoing advancements in CICS Transaction Server, and to provide the level of scalability, reliability, and performance expected of mainframe solutions. By using industry-standards like XML, SOAP, WSDL and ECMAScript, HostBridge saves companies time and money needed to integrate disparate applications, immediately extends the ROI of CICS resources and creates new value through business integration. For more information, visit http://www.hostbridge.com.
All trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.
For additional information, contact: Michael Wilson, of HostBridge Technology, +1-512-507-8244.
News issued by: HostBridge Technology
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Original Story ID: (1461) :: 2006-03-0322-002
Original Keywords: XML-enables CICS Transaction Server applications, host bridge, IBM, mainframe-based transaction processing system, patent, CICS integration technology, screen scraping, CICS TS, BMS transactions, CICS Transaction Server, XML documents, Russ Teubner, ECMAScript, Oklahoma, U.S. Patent Number 6,981,257 B2 HostBridge Technology
News Source: HostBridge Technology
