Condense ILE service program procedures

My mission is to encapsulate ILE service program procedures and make them available as Web services. While evaluating WebSphere Development Studio Client (WDSC), I found reference to a two-step procedure that might do that. The first step uses the Program Call wizard to produce a bean and PCML file. In the second step, the Web Services wizard transforms the bean and PCML file into a Web service.

Am I on the right track? Do these steps produce a fully functional Web service or just a shell that requires additional Java programming? We lack Java expertise in my shop, so I hope these wizards will help us accomplish our mission, and WDSC will position us to start modernizing our skill sets.

Yes the wizards in WDSC 5.1.2 will generate a complete Web service functionally, including (optionally) a test client to access the service. Very neat. The problem practically has been that the services are usually useful for simple scenarios and sometimes have to be adapted on the client end. They also are not 'published' to a third-party broker if that's needed ( a separate step).

I've used them (the WDSC Web services wizards) successfully for limited scenarios with a number of customers. More sophisticated services, including those running with SSL to outside parties, may need customer programming or configuration. We've also been successful teaching existing iSeries developers how to build those WDSC services in a day over the Web.

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This was first published in August 2005

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