Oracle Transparent Gateway on AIX

Dear Oracle professionals,

My company asked me to design a connection between an existing mainframe CICS-application and an Oracle 7.3 database on AIX.

I got some hints, telling me to use Oracle Transparent Gateway and SNA-server on AIX, which could communicate with the CICS-applications on the mainframe-side or directly to the databases.

On the mainframe side, nothing may be changed in a short period of time, so my idea is to simulate a 3270-emulation on the AIX side, just like a terminal is logging into the mainframe, and then screen-scrape my information from the running CICS-screen. (Of course it's a better design to get my information directly from the DB2- of VSAM-database, but that is very big problem in our company: security, security, security...)

I quess, the only thing I've got to do is to build a stored-procedure in the database which can be called by a client running on Oracle*Forms and which is calling the Oracle Transparent Gateway, by using it's API (...or is it calling the CICS-application by just using the OTG-API's?)

My questions are:
- How do the commands in the stored-procedure look like, which are calling
the Oracle transparent gateway?
- How do I scrape the information from the CICS screen and give it back to
my stored procedure?
- Which products should I install on my RS/6000, besides of Oracle 7.3 and
SQL*Net 2.x?

If you've built a connection like this, please can you tell me your experience and give me a detailed description, about how I should design it and make it work? Actually I'm only interested in proven solutions.

Thanks a lot!!!!

Jeroen Oosterveld
Postbank NV
The Netherlands Received on Sat May 30 1998 - 13:12:44 CDT