by Peter M. Horbach

tcVISION now also takes care of the REST

It is very exciting and interesting when you look at the development of IT over the last few decades. I can still remember well when I gave a presentation about the World Wide Web and TCP/IP at a GSE event at IBM in Sindelfingen in the early 1990s. The Internet was still in its infancy, but its potential was obvious. Today, 30 years later, IT without TCP and HTTP is no longer imaginable.

Saving several terabytes of data in the cloud, sending a tweet and integrating images and objects into a website with a click are everyday processes. Nothing earth shattering anymore. The reason for this simplicity is the REST API.

Representational State Transfer is the meaning behind the acronym REST and represents an abstraction of the structure and behavior of the WorldWideWeb. It is used to change the status of an application via the transfer of data.

Before REST became known, other forms of machine-to-machine communication were already available. These are, for example, SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), RPC (Remote Procedure Call) or WSDL (Web Service Description Language).

SOAP has long been the standard approach for web service interfaces. In recent years, however, it has become more and more dominated by REST. With REST, there is now a simple, easy-to-learn alternative to accessing web services over HTTP compared to these methods.

The Internet provides enough information to learn about the differences between SOAP and REST API, for example.

BOS also uses the advantages of REST for different functions within the tcVISION solution. Examples are the automation function per process, or monitoring functions.

The REST API provides interaction with services by transmitting and displaying the state of a resource over the HTTP protocol. The REST API is based on URLs and usually uses the JSON format.

The tcVISION REST-API behaves as a client towards a tcVISION agent. This is the same principle as the graphical user interface of tcVISION, the dashboard.

The inputs and outputs of the REST API are in JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) format, an easy-to-read text data format.

The tcVISION REST API supports different HTTP methods, e.g. in the area of repository data sources or for general monitoring of the tcVISION agents in the network.

REST is great for getting status data on important resources in a simple, easy-to-learn way.

Mainframe modernization or change data capture in real time between different platforms with tcVISION is the guarantee that the proven "old" can work with modern solutions.

tcVISION is ideally suited to connecting the traditional mainframe (regardless of whether the operating system is called z/OS or z/VSE) with modern platforms (Linux, Unix Windows) and the latest technologies from cloud and big data systems.

With the integration of REST, another important step has been taken in - and for - the future.

You can find an overview of all supported input and output targets here.

Peter M. Horbach has been active in the area of data synchronization and replication with more than 40 years of IT experience. He manages the international partner business for BOS Software and writes for our blog.

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