Get Your Kicks on CICS for SOA

RedMonk Analyst James Governor, who has had one ear to the IBM space and another to the burgeoning SOA/Enterprise 2.0 space for some time now, recently reflected on the changing role of CICS, once the standard middleware for mainframes. (Around before middleware was even called middleware.)

James wonders whether IBM’s pitch to abstract CICS functions into an SOA-based service layer can alleviate the need for hard-core mainframe programming and administration skills. Under the law of “leaky abstractions,” he says, things go wrong, and there will always be a need to dig underneath the virtual layer and learn to code what’s underneath.

Thus, if the mainframe is to be a player in SOA, companies will need a solid core of mainframe skills — not just SOA skills.

Still, maybe CICS’s time has come again. “Originally it was a customer information control system. I think its time to make CICS a front and center information management platform again, rather than just providing transaction management services. That’s a potential new frame for the frame. And yes – IBM’s moves to offer REST interfaces to CICS is a good move in that direction, as is all the WS-* service enablement.”