Interface Mapping Toolkit (IMTK)

Restriction: This topic applies only when the Enterprise Server feature is enabled.
Important: We highly recommend that you do the IMTK tutorials to get a feel for using these tools. See Tutorials: Interface Mapping Toolkit (IMTK) in the Getting Started section under Native COBOL Tutorials.

The IMTK enables you to create an interface between a legacy COBOL application running on an ESI as a service, such as a Web service or Java service, and a non-COBOL client, such as a Web service client or a JSP client. The interface you create is called a service interface. In your service interface, you can expose as much or as little of the original legacy application functionality as you choose. Because legacy applications often perform a wide variety of functions, the creation of a service interface enables you to limit your end users to access only the functions they need.

You can create the following types of service interfaces for COBOL programs:

  • .NET Interface
  • Java Interface
  • Web Service from WSDL
  • Web Service from request-response JSON schemas
  • RESTful Web Service from JSON schema
Attention: To deploy or generate a client for a Java Interface, you must install and configure the Java JDK and a Java application server. See the Application Server JCA support for Enterprise Server topic under Additional Software Requirements.

The process of creating a working service interface to run on Enterprise Server includes the following:

  • Creating and configuring an enterprise server instance to run the legacy application as a service
  • Creating a service interface in a Visual COBOL project
  • Defining the details of the service interface using the Interface Mapper
  • Deploying the legacy application and service interface to your enterprise server instance
  • Generating one or more clients to access the service running on the enterprise server instance