A sharable protocol is an XML-based definition
in the EGL deployment descriptor. The purpose of a sharable protocol
is to specify the communication details that are necessary to access
certain kinds of services and to deploy other kinds.
You define a sharable protocol for the following purposes:
- In some cases, you intend to reference the sharable-protocol definition
in one or more service bindings in the EGL deployment descriptor.
Each of those bindings identifies how a requester accesses a service.
In
the context of service bindings, you can reference the sharable protocols
for the following purposes:
- To access a remote EGL service on any platform
- To access an IBM® i service
program by way of a native binding
Currently, Rich UI applications can access neither of those
kinds of services directly.
- Alternatively, you can reference the sharable-protocol definition
when you create a services-deployment entry in the EGL deployment
descriptor.
In the context of service deployment, you can use the
sharable-protocol definition for the following purposes:
- To state the processing that is needed at run time to support
an EGL-generated COBOL web service on z/OS® CICS®
- To state the processing that is needed at run time to support
an EGL-generated COBOL web service on IBM i
- To state the processing that is needed at run time, on IBM i, to access called programs
and service programs that were made available as follows: at development
time, you coded an EGL external type (type HostProgram),
and at generation time, the EGL generator created a web service from
the external type. For details about this EGL capability, see “Accessing IBM i programs as web services:
an overview.”
In each of those cases, the following process occurs at
run time:
- A requester uses HTTP to transmit text-based data and to receive
the returned data.
- A different protocol is used to exchange data between (a) the
endpoint that accepts and returns text-based data and (b) the business
logic.
For additional details, see “EGL support for SOA.”
A sharable protocol is not used if communication is solely by way
of HTTP.