z/OS Connect terminology

Systems of Engagement and Systems of Record

The terms Systems of Engagement (SoE) and Systems of Record (SoR) have replaced the older client and server terminology when describing how different systems are classified in the cloud environment. IBM® z/OS® Connect provides the tools that are needed to transform requests from SoE environments to applications that are running on SoR servers on the z/OS operating system.

RESTful services

REST is an acronym for Representational State Transfer, or the pattern that is most commonly used for web requests today that run over the HTTP protocol. The REST protocol relies solely on the HTTP GET/PUT/POST/DELETE methods. A concrete implementation of a RESTful service must provide the following:

• Explicit use of HTTP
• Stateless functionality
• Displays directory structure-like URIs
• Support Transfer XML, JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), or both

IBM z/OS Connect provides a set of RESTful services that offer discovery and linkage from external cloud, mobile, and web environments to business assets on z/OS systems. Use a RESTful HTTP GET request to return a list of services that the target z/OS Connect server has under its management and another GET request to return the information about a single service, such as the service provider that it uses, like WOLA, and the other artifacts that are needed to invoke, or call, the asset. An HTTP POST or PUT request is used to invoke the asset, by passing a request payload to the asset and returning a response.