I had a chance to watch - Modernizing business critical applications with open languages on z/OS - Webinar replays.  Very well done. 

I am little confused with the role of zos/connect with the inception of the modern languages.  node.js/python/go allows me to expose and consume the REST APIs easily and can interface with the system of records as well. If so, then why do I need z/OS connect?  Can you please provide some scenarios where I need z/os Connect?  Can you please provide some scenarios where z/OS connect and modern language apps could work together?

Mac

Hi Mac,

Thanks for the post.

Of course you are right that by using modern languages (or indeed any a language) on z/OS, it is a "mere matter of programming" to produce or call a REST API interface to/from an existing z/OS application. However, when you scale this to the task of providing API integration for tens of thousands of core business assets, that reside on different z/OS SoRs, and are written in various native languages requiring different data transformations, then the development time/cost of "hand coding" an API integration solution becomes far less appealing.

And the Native->JSON part is typically the "easy" bit. Far harder are the challenges of security, scale, enterprise grade robustness, HA and monitoring that an API solution in a z/OS context demands. This means that a true production ready "hand crafted" API transformation gateway can take months, if not years, of development effort and that's before you've considered the go-forward maintenance costs to keep it current with changing standards.

This is where z/OS Connect comes in. Not only does it allow developers to create APIs to and from all their native z/OS assets in minutes (removing over 99% of the development cost and time), but it also provides a single framework for securing and controlling API access to/from core z/OS assets allowing customers to scale with confidence to hundreds of millions of API requests per day.

So, in summary, whilst Node.js, Python, Go, etc are great for removing a skill barrier to development, and provide a modern way to extend business logic or create net new apps on z/OS, if your main goal is to REST API enable existing z/OS assets, z/OS Connect provides a much simpler, cheaper, low risk solution to that particular challenge.

I hope that helps, let me know if you have any more questions :-)

Tony