• Illustration: Levels of Host Integration

Host Integration Server (HIS) 2006 enables developers to tie together Windows and IBM mainframe and midrange components with the improved tools of Visual Studio 2005. Released Nov. 2006, HIS 2006 also enables organizations to hook hosts into integration "hubs" built on two other Microsoft products, BizTalk Server and Identity Integration Server, simplifying integration solutions that involve many disparate systems.

Mainframe and Midrange Integration Still Matters

HIS provides gateway services between Windows applications and applications and data on IBM zSeries and iSeries (AS/400) hosts. It implements IBM's SNA network technologies for host communications, supports integration of user credentials between Windows Active Directory and host authentication systems such as RACF, and enables Windows applications to integrate with host software at several levels. (See the illustration "Levels of Host Integration".) Partners including Attachmate, eXc Software, Farabi Technology, NetManage, and Proginet add capabilities such as host-to-Windows password change synchronization and "screen scraping," extracting data from the terminal user interface (UI) of a host application to enable processing with Windows business logic.

HIS remains important to industries such as banking and the public sector where organizations still run critical business applications on IBM hosts. With HIS, organizations can integrate Windows applications, such as customer relationship management (CRM) systems, with proven business logic and existing data on the host, without requiring changes to the host application. HIS also makes it possible to incorporate new Windows-based modules into existing host-based applications.

For Microsoft and partners, HIS provides a foot in the door for Windows Server and other strategic products in shops that depend on IBM hosts. It also promotes key Windows technologies, particularly the .NET Framework application platform and the Visual Studio development environment, rather than competing technologies, such as Java and Linux, that IBM and other vendors promote for host integration.

Supporting 2005 Developer Technologies

HIS 2006 exploits two key developer technologies released in late 2005: the NET Framework 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005. This in turn gives Windows developers better tools for working with host data and enables developers to take advantage of the substantially improved ASP.NET 2.0 Web platform to put front ends on host applications.

Business Logic and User Interface Integration

HIS 2006 delivers an updated version of Transaction Integrator for Visual Studio 2005 and the .NET Framework 2.0.

The Transaction Integrator toolset generates COM or .NET Framework components that integrate mainframe business logic into Windows applications. It supports both Windows-initiated processing (e.g., a Windows bank teller application calls core banking logic on a host) and host-initiated processing (e.g., a banking application on a host extracts customer information from a Windows CRM application). Transaction Integrator can import mainframe COBOL and Report Program Generator (RPG) data declarations, generate the COM or .NET interfaces that run on Windows, and manage communication with the host, speeding the work of developers. Transaction Integrator works only for host applications that have separate business logic and user interfaceUI components; host applications that intertwine business logic and the UI require screen scraping, which Transaction Integrator does not provide.

The latest Transaction Integrator delivers some performance improvements. For example, components generated by Transaction Integrator can now run in the same process as the Windows application they support, reducing process-switching overhead. Host-initiated processing now supports persistent connections between Windows servers and hosts, reducing the startup time of transactions. (Host-initiated processing design tools also now support iSeries hosts, rather than just zSeries as in previous versions.)

In addition, Transaction Integrator simplifies some tools: for example, the Transaction Integrator Manager console can now directly generate an ASP.NET Web service for a host transaction program in a single step; previous versions required developers to first generate a .NET or COM wrapper and then generate the Web service. Similarly, developers can now deploy and remove components generated by Transaction Integrator from within Visual Studio, rather than performing these steps from a separate console. Transaction Integrator tools can also handle some COBOL and RPG constructs (e.g., dynamic COBOL REDEFINE data declarations) not supported in earlier versions.

For mainframe UI integration, HIS 2006 provides new .NET Framework and COM APIs (called Session Integrator) for reading and writing data from host terminal sessions. Among other things, these APIs enable developers to write screen-scraping tools in .NET Framework languages such as C#; in previous versions, developers had to rely on the C-based FMI and LUA APIs. The Session Integrator APIs specifically support 3270 and LUA sessions. Note that HIS 2006 still does not include any out-of-the-box screen-scraping tools, but the Session Integrator APIs should make such tools easier to write in Visual Studio 2005.

Data Integration

HIS 2006 includes new OLE DB, ODBC, and ADO.NET data providers for host data sources. Specifically, it delivers a DB2 provider for host IBM DB2 databases and a provider for Host Files that supports a variety of mainframe file formats. The new providers support the ADO.NET 2.0 APIs, a feature of the .NET Framework 2.0 which enables them to work with the improved data design tools of Visual Studio 2005.

The new providers have some other improvements. For example, the Host Files provider has a designer that enables import of file record formats from host COBOL or RPG source code, speeding creation of the corresponding data definitions in Visual Studio. The DB2 provider also supports prepared (precompiled) SQL statements, which improves performance when the same statement must be run repeatedly. The DB2 provider has been updated for more recent versions of DB2, including versions 8 and 9.

Enabling Hub-and-Spoke Integration

HIS 2006 also exploits two other Microsoft integration products: BizTalk Server 2006, for application integration, and Identity Integration Server, for integration of user credentials and other types of identity data. Both BizTalk Server and Identity Integration Server support "hub-and-spoke" integration architectures, in which a single logical hub integrates multiple systems. When large numbers of systems must be integrated, a hub-and-spoke architecture can radically simplify the task by reducing the total number of point-to-point connections among systems that have to be developed and maintained.

HIS already supports hub-and-spoke integration for data with SQL Server: Customers can build a hub with SQL Server components, such as Integration Services, and connect mainframe files and databases as spokes through HIS data providers. However, HIS 2006 support for BizTalk Server and Identity Integration Server enables other kinds of hub-and-spoke integration. For example, customers can use BizTalk Server as a hub for processing transactions that use both mainframe and Windows business logic.

BizTalk Server Adapters for Application, Data Integration

Microsoft released a series of BizTalk Server 2006 adapters based on HIS 2006 technology at the same time it released the HIS 2006 product. The adapters enable BizTalk Server to function as an integration hub for mainframe and midrange applications, as well as for other applications in an organization.

In general, BizTalk Server adapters convert between application-specific network protocols and data formats and BizTalk Server's internal message format. Once a developer has an adapter for one application, the developer can program BizTalk Server to coordinate transactions and move BizTalk messages between that application and any other application that has an appropriate adapter. BizTalk Server provides extensive tools for defining and mapping between message formats to speed data translation among applications.

New BizTalk Server adapters for host integration include the following:

Adapter for Host Applications. With this adapter, BizTalk Server messages can call mainframe transaction programs and transmit their results. The adapter uses Transaction Integrator Windows-initiated processing; hosts can't send messages into BizTalk Server except in response to request messages sent by BizTalk.

DB2 and Host File Adapters. These adapters enable BizTalk Server to query and update IBM DB2 and mainframe files, using the new providers for those data sources and the BizTalk Server "database transport" feature, which supports database operations through BizTalk messages.

Adapter for WebSphere MQ (client-based). This adapter enables BizTalk Server to send messages to applications, including host applications, that use the IBM Websphere MQ messaging technology (formerly MQSeries). Unlike the existing BizTalk Server adapter for Websphere MQ, this adapter does not host Websphere MQ queues and so does not require installation of a Websphere MQ server on the BizTalk Server computer. This can simplify setup and maintenance of the BizTalk Server computer, although Websphere MQ client software is still required. This adapter also avoids the translation overhead of the MSMQ-MQSeries bridge included with the full HIS product.

All BizTalk Server 2006 installations are automatically licensed for the adapters, which can be installed separately from the full HIS 2006 product. However, BizTalk Server 2006 customers are also licensed for the full HIS 2006 product, which includes the adapters.

Over time, BizTalk Server appears set to take over more and more of the role of HIS. However, Microsoft still sells the Host Integration Server product standalone to provide a (much) less expensive option for point-to-point integration with hosts. The standalone HIS product also continues to be used with integration products other than BizTalk Server (e.g., IBM's Websphere MQ products).

Identity Integration Server for User Credentials

HIS 2006 delivers improvements for integrating user credentials (usernames and passwords) between Windows and hosts, simplifying log-on to hosts by Windows users and vice versa.

Like earlier versions, HIS 2006 can propagate password changes from Windows to hosts and, it supports host-to-Windows password changes with the addition of third-party software. These password synchronization capabilities ensure that a user has the same password on Windows as on the host, although users must still remember usernames and passwords on all systems and sign on to those systems separately.

However, HIS and BizTalk Server also offer an optional enterprise single sign-on service (often called EntSSO), which enables Windows users (or applications) to log on once and then automatically be logged on to their other applications, without remembering and retyping credentials for the applications. In HIS, EntSSO is particularly useful for sign-on to host applications, which typically rely on their own authentication systems (such as IBM's RACF).

A new management agent in HIS 2006 connects EntSSO to the Identity Integration Server product (formerly called Microsoft Metadirectory Services). Identity Integration Server integrates multiple stores of identity data, such as usernames, passwords, and contact information, to simplify operations that cut across multiple identity databases, such as removing terminated employees. Like BizTalk Server, Identity Integration Server supports a hub-and-spoke architecture: the product maintains a hub identity database and uses management agents to synchronize with multiple "spoke" identity databases, including Active Directory, human resources systems, and Web site user databases.

Identity Integration Server already includes a Host Access management agent for password synchronization to the IBM RACF and CA eTrust mainframe authentication systems; this agent incorporates HIS 2004. The new HIS 2006 management agent for EntSSO complements this capability: Organizations can maintain each user's EntSSO credentials in Identity Integration Server along with all of the user's other identity data. Among other things, this can ensure that the single sign-on credentials are enabled and disabled reliably when users are added and removed.

HIS also delivers other improvements to EntSSO, including the following:

• A new wizard for translating usernames from Windows to credentials in other applications, speeding initial setup of the single sign-on database
• Support for password filters, ensuring that user passwords are compatible with all the systems that they need to sign on to.

In mid-2007, Microsoft plans to update the Identity Integration Server Host Access management agent to support iSeries authentication systems and other new features; the new management agent will include HIS 2006 components.

X64 Support and Other Improvements

HIS 2006 is the first version of the product to run on 64-bit processors; it does not support the Intel Itanium architecture, but does support the x64 architecture developed by AMD and also used in most Intel 64-bit processors. Support for 64-bit processors could particularly benefit Windows applications that access large host databases and files, by making a larger 64-bit memory space available to cache data.

HIS 2006 also delivers a large number of small improvements for networking, security, and management. Among the most notable:

• The High Performance Routing over Internet Protocol (HPR/IP) stack and single sign-on service support Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), important in organizations (e.g., the U.S. Department of Defense) that have mainframes but want IPv6 support for future network growth, improved security, and simpler client configuration
• The Kerberos protocol is now supported for authentication between clients and computers running HIS 2006, aiding organizations that have standardized on the protocol
• HIS 2006 has many services and settings turned off by default, which improves security by reducing the initial attack surface.

Pricing and Resources

HIS 2006 costs US$2,500 per processor, in line with previous versions (quantity discounts of up to 25% are available). Customers of BizTalk Server 2006 (US$8,500 per processor for Standard Edition) are licensed for HIS 2006 and the BizTalk Server host adapters.

HIS 2006 runs on Windows 2000 SP4 (with an additional hotfix), Windows Server 2003 or later, and Windows XP SP1 or later. The .NET Framework 2.0 is required. Some features require Visual Studio 2005 or SQL Server (version 2000 SP3 or later).

An overview of HIS appeared in "Host Integration Server 2004 Available" on page 14 of the Nov. 2004 Update.

Microsoft's HIS site is www.microsoft.com/hiserver.

New HIS 2006 features are summarized in more detail at www.microsoft.com/hiserver/evaluation/features.