Micro Focus Enterprise Developer 2.3 for Visual Studio 2015 > Programming > Mainframe Programming > Interface Mapping using the IMTK > Interface Mapping Toolkit (IMTK)

Interface Mapping Toolkit (IMTK)

Describes the functionality available in the Interface Mapping Toolkit (IMTK) that enables you to create and define a service interface based on an existing COBOL or PL/I application, deploy the service interface to an enterprise server instance running the legacy application as a service, and to generate one or more clients that can access the service via the new service interface.

The IMTK enables you to create interfaces between an application running as a service, such as a Web service or Java that exposes existing COBOL and PL/I programs for access from COBOL Web services and non-COBOL clients such as Java interfaces and .NET interfaces. In the context of the IMTK, we call these interfaces service interfaces. A service interface is a collection of input and output fields of a particular format used to communicate with the application via a particular protocol. You can use a service interface created with the IMTK to access a COBOL application running under Enterprise Server. The IMTK supports the creation of service interfaces for the following types of applications:

COBOL batch
COBOL CICS
COBOL IMS
PL/I applications that send or receive either CICS BMS or IMS MFS maps

All services generated by the IMTK are COBOL programs even if the application they access is PL/I.

The IMTK supports the generation of service interfaces using the fields available in the following types of source code:

COBOL programs using the LINKAGE section
COBOL CICS programs using the commarea
CICS BMS maps
IMS MFS maps

You can provide access to all of the functionality of an application, or you can create one or more service interfaces for specific pieces of an application. For example, if by design your application processes large amounts of information irrelevant to the common user, you can create a service interface to extract only the relevant information. For CICS and IMS applications, you can also consolidate screen fields from multiple maps into an interface that precisely targets your users.

You can create the following types of service interfaces:

REST Web Service
SOAP Web Service
Java
.NET

The COBOL and PL/I applications for which you create services interfaces run under Enterprise Server. COBOL and PL/I applications can run with or without the Enterprise Server Mainframe Subsystem Support (MSS). CICS and IMS applications must be deployed to an enterprise server configured for MSS.

The process of creating a working service interface includes the following:

Configuring an enterprise server to run the service
Creating a service interface in a project
Defining the details of the service interface
Deploying the service interface
Generating one or more clients to access the service running on the enterprise server