ACUCOBOL-GT offers extensions designed to simplify communication with Web servers using the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) standard. These CGI extensions can be used to connect a Java program to an ACUCOBOL-GT program.
You develop a CGI program to act as an interface between the Web server and the ACUCOBOL-GT program. The CGI program can be written in ACUCOBOL-GT. See Writing a CGI Program for programming details.
From Java, you then open an HTTP connection to the Web server with a URL. The URL must have a pointer to the CGI program in it, encoded using CGI encoding.
Through CGI extensions to ACCEPT and DISPLAY syntax, your CGI program accepts CGI input data from the Java program; launches or subsumes your ACUCOBOL-GT application; and generates HTML, WML, or XML output forms from the results–whatever the Java program requires. The output could be considered a service, it could use SOAP, or it could be simple markup language output.
When you place your CGI program and ACUCOBOL-GT application on the Web server, along with the necessary configuration, license, and data files, your ACUCOBOL-GT application becomes immediately available to end users of the Java application. Conceptually, you're using CGI to do a remote procedure call.
See Launching Web Applications Through CGI for full details on using ACUCOBOL-GT's CGI syntax.