Jon Paris

Jon.Paris @ Partner400.com www.Partner400.com www.SystemiDeveloper.com

"Instant" Web Services and Stored Procedures

NotesJon Paris is co-founder of Partner400, a firm specializing in customized education and mentoring services for IBM i * developers.

Jon's career in IT spans 40+ years including a 12 year period with IBM's Toronto Laboratory.

Together with his partner Susan Gantner, Jon devotes his time to educating developers on techniques and technologies to extend and modernize their applications and development environments. Together Jon and Susan author regular technical articles for the IBM publication, IBM Systems Magazine, IBM i edition, and the companion electronic newsletter, IBM i EXTRA. You may view articles in current and past issues and/or subscribe to the free newsletter at: www.IBMSystemsMag.com.

Jon and Susan also write a weekly blog on Things "i" - and indeed anything else that takes their fancy. You can find the blog here: ibmsystemsmag.blogs.com/idevelop/

Feel free to contact the author at: Jon.Paris @ Partner400.com

* IBM i - aka AS/400, System i, iSeries, i5, etc.

How? XMLSERVICE - the latest IBM toolkit

What is it ? And why did we need a new toolkit ?

What is different about it ? It is Open Source and written in RPG!

How is it used ? From other languages and platforms

Agenda

XMLSERVICE - What Is It ?Originally created as part of the Zend/IBM partnership Now the core of Zend's PHP Toolkit for IBM i And the new toolkits for:

Node.js, Python, Ruby, and .Net plus many more to come

Allows usage of any program or utility on your IBM i Programs, Service Programs, CL commands, PASE utilities, ...

From anywhere Another IBM i, Windows, Unix, Linux, ...

Once set up nothing else required New programs can be accessed without any additional work

Two forms of access supported Web Service Stored Procedure

Development site hosted by the Young i Professionals youngiprofessionals.com

Why Did We Need a New Toolkit ?Limitations in existing tooling Java toolbox does not support return values

Except for four byte integers - Note that this limitation can be avoided in V7 by recompiling your RPG

subprocedures to use the new RTNPARM keyword Requires use of Java by requesting platform

Alternatively the other platform needs a Java bridge - In all other cases you are limited to ODBC capability

Java programming skills required to enhance toolbox Slow to deploy new functionality

If Java programmers didn't need it there was no incentive to add it New functionality means changes in PCML generation

So you have to wait for the compiler team to implement it The result?

It took years to get new data types added to the interface

Why Did We Need a New Toolkit ?We need an easy way to show "IBM i can do it!" i.e. a method to quickly prototype reuse of existing functionality Otherwise manual effort is required to deploy new functionality

Have to set up a new web service or stored procedure or .. Limited support for persistence Problematic if you want to deploy an existing 5250-style

application as a web service or browser application Proprietary Technology Java toolkit originally developed by IBM

Subsequently released as Open Source Previous PHP toolkit was actually produced by Aura

Known by Aura as EasyCom

What is Different About the New Toolkit ?Open Source under BSD License Completely free to use 100% RPG IV Any RPG programmer can modify All communications via XML documents Easier to debug Automatic conversion between ASCII and EBCDIC Usable in single and two tier environments All code on single IBM i Or any other system to IBM i Supports persistent connections Called RPG programs can retain state information

i.e. Just as they normally do in a 5250 job Facilitates repurposing of existing 5250 applications as web

services or browser jobs

What is Different About the New Toolkit ?Supports complex parameter types Arrays, DS, DS Arrays, Compound DS, ...

Program calls and commands can be run in sequence Ensures that results of one operation are available to the next

Directly supports return values As noted earlier, RPG's V7 RTNPARM keyword also allows you

to avoid this problem Can be invoked from any Client-side language As long as it can invoke a web service Or use an SQL connection

Security Requires use of valid user name and password

No matter what protocol is used Facilitates access control to IBM i resources

Toolkit ArchitectureCross Platform Language Agnostic Accessible from any language Toolkits available for IBM i supported languages

How Is It Used ? - From PHP New Zend Toolkit uses XMLSERVICE under the covers Supports all previous functionality and more Completely new set of APIs

Plus "wrappers" to allow existing code to use the new APIs Delivered as part of the Zend Server download

Or obtain from Young i Professionals site if using from another platform

yips.idevcloud.com/wiki/index.php/XMLService/XMLSERVICE

Allow PHP access from other platforms e.g. Linux, Windows, Mac, etc. The Zend components are also Open Source

All of the new APIs use an OO approach Still very easy to use for the non-OO programmer

XMLSERVICE: Stored Procedure InterfaceSupplied stored procedures are the preferred access method Can be accessed via ODBC, JDBC, DB2Connect, etc.

Can be used to access any program Eliminates need to create one stored procedure per program

Accepts four parameters IPC Key

A path to an IFS folder associated with a specific XMLSERVICE job - This is part of the persistence mechanism

CTL Parameters to control the service job's behavior

- e.g Debug mode, shut down job, etc. CLOB In and CLOB out

The Input and Output XML documents

XMLSERVICE: REST Web Service InterfaceTakes Seven Parameters

Note that three are the same as for the Stored Procedure interface db2 Name of database to access (*Local or Database name)

uid User Id

pwd Password

ipc and ctl Same as for the IPC and CTL Stored Procedure parameters

xmlin XML Input document

xmlout Maximum expected size of returned XML output document

XML Document Elements Executes the command line command specified between the tags

PASE equivalent of the tag.

Identifies program or subprocedure to be run

Attributes name= lib= and func= identify program name, library, and subprocedure name Parameters and return values for the program are defined within the element

Identifies a parameter. More details on next chart

Indicates that the parameter is a data structure. More details on next chart

Defines the parameter and populates it.

Identifies the return value on a subprocedure.

Definition of the return value is via and tags just like parameters

XML Document Element Attributes attributes io=... Parameter type "in" "out" or both by=... Parameter passing method

val (value) or ref (reference) attributes dim=... Maximum number of DS array elements dou=... Number of array elements actually populated.

attributes var=... Names the variable type=... Data type and size

e.g. 12a, 15p5, 9s2, etc. varying=... *on indicates a varying length field.

+++ success ADDLIBLE LIB(JONSLIB) < pgm name='XMLSRVTST1' lib='XMLSERVICE' > < parm > < data type='15p5' >5678901234.54321< /data > < /parm > < parm > < data type='30A' >Original value< /data > < /parm > < /pgm >

Simple Example of the Web Service InterfaceA simple program that takes two parameters A 15 digit packed numeric and a 30 character The second parameter will be modified by the called program

The User of your web service must send the XML shown below

This is the XML representation of

the prototype shown above

// Proto for XMLSRVTST1 d XMLSrvTst1 pr ExtPgm(XMLSRVTST1) d input 15p 5 d output 30a

// Relevant portion of the XML document returned < ?xml version='1.0'? > < pgm name='XMLSRVTST1' lib='XMLSERVICE' > < parm > < data >5678901234.54321< /data > < /parm > < parm > < data >Input was 5678901234.54321< /data > < /parm > < /pgm >

XML Returned by the Web ServiceThe document returned is almost identical to the one we sent But the parameter details (length and type) are omitted And the contents of the second parm have changed

This is highlighted below More on the XML in a moment

// Proto for XMLSRVTST1 d XMLSrvTst1 pr ExtPgm(XMLSRVTST1) d input 15p 5 d output 30a

Original field definitions are not returned in the response document. Only the field values

D LookupTest Pr LikeDS(rec_T) Dim(10) D searchFor 10a D max 10i 0 D count 10i 0

Paris 5 0

na na 0.0

More Complex XML Call DocumentElements and attributes not required by XMLSERVICE are echoed Useful in debugging returned data

Note the use of the field names

Document Returned From Procedure Call

Paris 5 3 Jon Paris Chief Cook and Bottle Washer 13.42