Web Services on the Mainframe

by Tom Welsh

Web services sprang from the grass roots of computing and have now become closely associated with the two dominant distributed platforms of our time: J2EE and .NET. Above all, they are evocative of modernity -- quintessentially leading (if not bleeding) edge. What could such 21st-century technology have to do with a 40-year-old architecture like the IBM mainframe? Well, as it turns out, quite a lot. Fifteen years ago, many commentators were predicting the imminent "death of the mainframe." Some did not even think it would survive until the end of the century! As so often happens, reality turned out to be counterintuitive: the mainframe gained a new lease of life, and today sales are as strong as ever.