Q and A

Asked and Answered

One on one with CheckFree Corp.'s Robert Catterall

In his most recent DB2 DBA column , Robert Catterall put the question of CICS vs. DB2 to rest. Or did he? Readers ask for more details about the benefits of using MQSeries/CICS to replace batch applications. And Robert obliges with more information.

Your comment near the end of [the DB2 DBA column] about using MQSeries/CICS to replace batch applications that are crammed into over night batch cycles interests me. My company, BCBSMA, is implementing MQSeries for the first time to interface its new CRM system to its legacy CICS applications. It is also evaluating implementing a middleware broker (MQSeries Integrator, Mercator, or STC E-gate) to handle more complex scenarios for additional applications next year. In the meantime, I am responsible for coming up with a framework and application integration strategy using middleware, including a definition of what should be considered appropriate application categories. I generally had not considered using MQSeries/CICS for this purpose. Can you expand on this idea or point me to reference material that would further explain that this type of use for MQSeries/CICS?

Robert Kowalewski
Boston, Mass.

Robert Catterall responds:

I first came across the idea of using MQSeries and CICS as an alternative to traditional batch processing while I was doing some DB2 consulting work at a financial services company in 1995. At this particular company, a certain batch process was in trouble because of the amount of work that had to be accomplished within a pretty tight window. As it turned out, the file that was the primary input to this batch process was one that was built through most of the day as records came into the system from remote locations. That's what gave the developers at this company the idea that they could process these records individually as they came in, as opposed to batching them. The developers proposed receiving these input records on several MQSeries queues (more than one, because they wanted to multithread the processing of the records). For each queue, an asynchronous CICS transaction would pull off records and perform the required DB2 processing. It was further proposed that the MQSeries queues would be set up so that the CICS transaction would be triggered when the queue depth hit something like 100 (this because they wanted to process multiple input records within a commit scope, for purposes of efficiency). I completed my work at this particular client site before the proposed design was implemented, but as I recall, successful implementation was eventually achieved.

After joining CheckFree earlier this year (after 17 years at IBM), I learned that one of my colleagues here had a similar experience when doing some work for a travel services company -- a batch process that was not performing acceptably was converted to an MQSeries/CICS "online batch" system, with positive results.

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