Why WebSocket Apps Are In Your IBM i Future

April 13, 2016 Alex Woodie

Do you pine for the simpler days of the AS/400, when RPG was king and data was served through super-efficient 5250 interfaces? If so, you’re not alone–the relentless crush of modern technologies takes a toll on all of us. But while the world isn’t likely to go back to RPG and 5250, you might find something that works in a similar way in a new technology called WebSockets.

KrengelTech‘s Aaron Bartell had a great description of WebSocket during a recent BCD webinar on Node.JS and other open source technologies for IBM i.

“It’s basically full duplex communication from client to server, but then also from the server to the client,” Bartell said. “Once a handshake has happened, where an agreed upon WebSocket is made, the server can actually notify the client of data, without the client having to poll the server. That’s one of the cool things about Nodejs is that it has very excellent WebSocket capabilities.”

WebSocket was officially proposed as an HTML5 standard by the Internet Engineering Task Force back in 2011, and WebSocket Protocol is in the process of being standardized in HTML5 by the World Wide Web Consortium. WebSocket has already been adopted by all major Web browsers, where it’s viewed as a big improvement over previous attempts to do full-duplex communication on port 80, namely AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) and Comet (also called Reverse AJAX).

IBM has adopted WebSockets technology within its HTTP Server (powered by Apache), as well as within the Integrated Web Application Server for i, the lightweight Java application runtime based on the Liberty profile of WebSphere. Developers can create WebSockets applications using either Java or Node.js.

IBM explored some of the concepts and chief benefits of WebSockets in a February 2016 paper titled Running WebSocket applications on IBM i.

“The HTTP protocol only allows a client to send a request to the server, and the server side can’t initialize a request to the client,” write the paper’s authors, IBM software engineers Tian Gant, Xu Meng, and Zheng Chang Qing. “Now, by using the new WebSocket technique, we have the ability for the server to send a request to the client.”

So, what can you do with WebSockets on IBM i? The IBM software engineers say it’s very useful for real-time Web applications, such as gaming. While gaming is great, it isn’t necessarily applicable to the average midrange shop struggling to run a business while avoiding technical complexity.

Bartell had his own examples of WebSockets in action, including one based on IBM i Dash, an open source project he created at https://bitbucket.org/litmis/ibmidash. IBM i Dash was written in Node.JS and provides a Web-based dashboard interface for the DB2 for i Services that IBM made available to basically provide SQL-based methods for IBM i administrative functions, such as the Work with Active Jobs command.

Bartell describes how WebSockets fits into the picture:

“Instead of calling a system API, I call an SQL view asking for WRKACTJOB info, and it returns back a result set,” Bartell said in the BCD webinar. “What’s intriguing is I can let the screen sit there and because it’s written in WebSockets, every two seconds it automatically refreshes for me. What’s even more interesting is, because of how WebSockets work, I only do one WRKACTJOB request for the 20 people that are on the same page, and that one request is delivered to those 20 people via an event emitter mechanism. . . There’s some very cool technology going on with very small network footprint.”

As open source technology improves, it’s giving everybody–including IBM i programmers–the power to tap into new sources of data and insight. One could even use the combination of WebSockets and Node.js to hook an IBM i application up to IBM’s Watson cloud service to automatically transcribe the audio content of customer service calls into text, and then do sentiment analysis upon the text. Bartell tried it with a free developer license to Watson, and he found it surprisingly easy to get it hooked up and running.

But within the context of WebSockets specifically, it’s fascinating how much it bears a resemblance to IBM’s 1970s era System Network Architecture (SNA) protocol, which was killed by the ubiquity of Ethernet and the TCP/IP protocol. The similarity wasn’t lost on Bartell.

“This is a significant evolution in the browser programming space because we no longer need to do the polling, which adds additional CPU cycles and bandwidth,” Bartell notes. “We’re starting to gain more efficiencies, which is kind of humorous because we’re getting back to the realities that we’ve already had with the 5250 approach. Again, IBM i had it all figured out way back in the day and the rest of the world is now catching up.”

The more technology improves, the more it stays the same.

First Open Source Conference For IBM i Shops Planned

GCC: Bringing More Open Source Software to IBM i

Demand Building for Node.js on IBM i

IBM Delivers Node.js Runtime to IBM i 7.1 and 7.2

Tags:

Do the Math When Looking at IBM i Hosting for Cost Savings

COVID-19 has accelerated certain business trends that were already gaining strength prior to the start of the pandemic. E-commerce, telehealth, and video conferencing are some of the most obvious examples. One example that may not be as obvious to the general public but has a profound impact on business is the shift in strategy of IBM i infrastructure from traditional, on-premises environments to some form of remote configuration. These remote configurations and all of their variations are broadly referred to in the community as IBM i hosting.

“Hosting” in this context can mean different things to different people, and in general, hosting refers to one of two scenarios. In the first scenario, hosting can refer to a client owned machine that is housed in a co-location facility (commonly called a co-lo for short) where the data center provides traditional system administrator services, relieving the client of administrative and operational responsibilities. In the second scenario, hosting can refer to an MSP owned machine in which partition resources are provided to the client in an on-demand capacity. This scenario allows the client to completely outsource all aspects of Power Systems hardware and the IBM i operating system and database.

The scenario that is best for each business depends on a number of factors and is largely up for debate. In most cases, pursuing hosting purely as a cost saving strategy is a dead end. Furthermore, when you consider all of the costs associated with maintaining and IBM i environment, it is typically not a cost-effective option for the small to midsize market. The most cost-effective approach for these organizations is often a combination of a client owned and maintained system (either on-prem or in a co-lo) with cloud backup and disaster-recovery-as-a-service. Only in some cases of larger enterprise companies can a hosting strategy start to become a potentially cost-effective option.

However, cost savings is just one part of the story. As IBM i expertise becomes scarce and IT resources run tight, the only option for some firms may be to pursue hosting in some capacity. Whatever the driving force for pursing hosting may be, the key point is that it is not just simply an option for running your workload in a different location. There are many details to consider and it is to the best interest of the client to work with an experienced MSP in weighing the benefits and drawbacks of each option. As COVID-19 rolls on, time will tell if IBM i hosting strategies will follow the other strong business trends of the pandemic.

When we say do the math in the title above, it literally means that you need to do the math for your particular scenario. It is not about us doing the math for you, making a case for either staying on premises or for moving to the cloud. There is not one answer, but just different levels of cost to be reckoned which yield different answers. Most IBM i shops have fairly static workloads, at least measured against the larger mix of stuff on the public clouds of the world. How do you measure the value of controlling your own IT fate? That will only be fully recognized at the moment when it is sorely missed the most.

CONTINUE READING ARTICLE

Please visit ucgtechnologies.com/IBM-POWER9-systems for more information.

800.211.8798 | info@ucgtechnologies.com

Article featured in IT Jungle on April 5, 2021