CONFIGURING AND CONSTRUCTING APPLICATIONS IN A MAINFRAME-BASED COMPUTING ENVIRONMENT

• US 20090100402A1
• Filed: 10/09/2008
• Published: 04/16/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 10/12/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc.
• Original Assignee: The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc.
• Inventors: Heuler, Randal J., Crilley, Duane K.
• Granted Patent: US 8,572,564 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/100
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/10 Requirements analysis; Specification techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/36 Software reuse

Abstract

In various embodiments, a system is provided for building configurable applications. The system may include a distributed tier with a presentation module accessible by a user which is configured to permit configuration of an interface in a session with the user and an interface module configured to process session state data in an extensible language format. The system may also include a mainframe system having an enterprise architecture integration (EAI) framework configured for receiving the extensible language formatted state data and invoking at least one service in association with evaluating the extensible language formatted state data and a business rules engine based on an extensible language format. The mainframe system may be configured to translate the evaluated state data into a reply message based on the extensible language format.

Claims

1. A system for building configurable applications, the system comprising.

a distributed tier including:

(i) a presentation module accessible by a user, the presentation module being configured to permit configuration of an interface in a session with the user, the session generating state data including at least one indication of a modification to the interface, and,

(ii) an interface module configured to process at least a portion of the state data in an extensible language format;

a mainframe system including;

(i) an enterprise architecture integration (EAI) framework configured for receiving the extensible language formatted state data and invoking at least one service in association with evaluating the extensible language formatted state data, and

(ii) a business rules engine having at least one rule based on an extensible language format, the business rules engine being accessible by the EAI framework in association with evaluating the state data; and

,

the mainframe system being configured to translate the evaluated state data into a reply message based on an extensible language format.

2. The system of claim 1, further comprising the interface module being configured to route data from the presentation module to a business process management system.

3. The system of claim 1, further comprising the interface module being configured for MQ abstraction in association with communicating data to the mainframe system.

4. The system of claim 1, further comprising an MQ hub for processing data communicated between the distributed tier and the mainframe system.

5. The system of claim 1, further comprising the EAI framework being configured to serve as at least one of an MQ connector, an extensible markup language (XML) generator, an XML translator, or a field level data validator for data communicated to or from the mainframe system.

6. The system of claim 1, further comprising the EAI framework being configured for communication with at least one external data source.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the reply message includes data associated with a blank presentation template.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the reply message includes data associated with a presentation configured based on existing state data.

9. The system of claim 1, further comprising the business rules engine being configured with at least one of a before-rule or an after-rule.

10. The system of claim 1, wherein the business rules engine further comprises at least one configurable screen definition.

11. The system of claim 1, further comprising the distributed tier being configured to perform an XSLT transformation on the reply message received from the mainframe system.

12. The system of claim 11, further comprising the distributed tier being configured to convert the transformed replay message into a protocol viewable by a browser.

13. A method for building configurable applications, the method comprising:

facilitating access to a presentation module by a user, the presentation module being configured to permit configuration of an interface in a session with the user, the session generating state data including at least one indication of a modification to the interface;

processing at least a portion of the state data in an extensible language format;

receiving the extensible language formatted state data in an enterprise architecture integration framework (EAI) of a mainframe system;

invoking at least one service in association with evaluating the extensible language formatted state data;

triggering at least one rule in association with the invoked EAI service for evaluating the formatted state data, the rule being based on an extensible language format;

translating the evaluated state data into a reply message based on an extensible language format.

14. The method of claim 13, further comprising routing data from the presentation module to a business process management system.

15. The method of claim 13, further comprising receiving data communicated from at least one external data source.

16. The method of claim 13, wherein the reply message includes data associated with a blank presentation template.

17. The method of claim 13, wherein the reply message includes data associated with a presentation configured based on existing state data.

18. The method of claim 13, further comprising performing an XSLT transformation on the reply message generated by the mainframe system.

19. The method of claim 18, further comprising converting the transformed replay message into a protocol viewable by a browser.