There is a strong shift in the industry toward reuse of the existing software and hardware resources within the companies to minimize the IT cost. Instead of creating or buying a new solutions, companies are trying to build a set of reusable software components based on the existing applications. These components can be quickly assembled in many different ways to satisfy the business needs of the companies.

This environment is based on service-oriented architecture (SOA) and solutions that support business process automation.

This book provides the detailed information about multiple ways for building SOA-based solutions around the System i platform. The discussion in the book covers the server and client side implementations that include:

- ProgramCall in IBM Toolbox for Java

- Host Access Transformation Services (HATS)

- DB2 Web services

- PHP

- IBM Web Services Client for ILE

- Java-Server Faces (JSF)

Parts of the book are appropriate for CIOs, system architects, and application developers.

Part 1. SOA: Understanding the big picture

Chapter 1. SOA overview

Chapter 2. SOA application design

Chapter 3. Web services technology stack

Chapter 4. Sample scenario

Part 2. Implementing the service provider

Chapter 5. ProgramCall (RPG, Cobol) Web service

Chapter 6. DB2 UDB Web service

Chapter 7. HATS Web service

Chapter 8. PHP Web service

Part 3. Implementing Service Consumer

Chapter 9. IBM Web Services Client for ILE (RPG, C, C++, COBOL)

Chapter 10. JSF Web service client

Chapter 11. PHP Web service client

Appendix A. Setting the connection to WebSphere Application Server V6.0

Appendix B. URI length limit of 259 characters on Windows

Appendix C. Useful tools

Appendix D. Additional material