SYNOPSIS

Are your mainframe applications working as hard as they could? Or, is your mainframe data held hostage by the closed mainframe world? Learn straightforward, practical ways to free your mainframe data to interact with Web applications, modern client applications, and much more, all without recoding your mainframe app or modifying the mainframe in any way. The Essentials Series: Mainframe Application Modernization is the perfect guide for anyone with a mainframe in their environment, and especially those who have wished the mainframe could be a bit more open and connected to the rest of their IT efforts and projects.

CHAPTER PREVIEWS

Article 1: Is Your Mainframe Application Working as Hard as You Are?

Author Don Jones looks at why mainframe applications - and their data - tend to be "stuck in a box," and what business problems that can cause. You'll learn some of the advantages you can realize by "freeing" your data from the box, and learn some of the hurdles you'll need to overcome in order to do so.

Article 2: Options for Modernizing Mainframe Applications

There are many ways to free your mainframe data and leverage it in wider-ranging IT projects. Over the years, companies have rehosted, recoded, and repackaged their mainframes and applications - which of these approaches tends to work best? Which are more practical? Which can enable you to leverage mainframe data in other projects without modifying the mainframe?

Article 3: Considerations for Injecting Life into Mainframe Applications

Tackling the most popular approach for extending mainframe data and modernizing mainframe applications, author Don Jones walks you through three specific techniques - host integration, bridge integration, and transaction integration - and explains how each technique works, how they interact with the mainframe, and how they enable Java, Web, and .NET applications to start integrating with mainframe data and applications.