Web service objects in 15 minutes

Solutions company Attachmate has unveiled a new software tool to make mainframes accessible to web services within 15 minutes.

The company said its MyExtra software does not touch the code residing on the mainframe and so can reduce development time taken to produce a web service. It also works on mid-range Unix systems.

Jon Newlyn, business development manager at Attachmate, said the web services objects are quick to build because the tool does not rely on the data to be split from the business logic that manipulates it.

"Companies are being told to separate the logic from the data. But if this all works okay on the mainframe, where is the immediate return on investment to split these up?" he said.

The software uses the logic already present on the mainframe to access the data. It then presents the data in a format that can be handled as a .Net service, Java bean or extensible markup language transaction.

It uses drag-and-drop methods to pull input and output fields, which control the flow of data without specialist programming knowledge. In turn these objects can be published as a web service.