The Service Bridge facility

The creation of SOAP and REST Web Services is made easy by the isCOBOL Server Bridge facility. With this feature enabled, every time the Compiler compiles a legacy COBOL program with Linkage Section, it generates a bridge class that allows the program to be used as a Web Service.

The feature is activated and controlled through the Library Routines and Utilities Configuration entries that can be set either in the configuration file or directly in the source through the SET Directive. isCOBOL IDE users instead can rely on the isCOBOL Service Editor.

Let’s consider the legacy COBOL program "SONGS.cbl" installed among isCOBOL samples. Such program allows to manage an archive of songs. It has the following Linkage Section:

01  lnk-op-code             pic x.            88 lnk-insert           value "I".            88 lnk-update           value "U".            88 lnk-read             value "R".            88 lnk-read-next        value "N".            88 lnk-read-previous    value "P".            88 lnk-delete           value "D".            88 lnk-first            value "F".            88 lnk-last             value "L".        01  lnk-song-data.            05 lnk-sd-id            pic 9(5).            05 lnk-sd-title         pic x(30).            05 lnk-sd-length        pic x(5).            05 lnk-sd-artist        pic x(20).            05 lnk-sd-album         pic x(30).            05 lnk-sd-genre         pic x(15).            05 lnk-sd-label         pic x(30).            05 lnk-sd-year          pic 9(4).            05 lnk-sd-authors       occurs 5.               10 lnk-sd-author     pic x(20).        01  lnk-return-status.            05 lnk-status           pic x(2).               88 lnk-ok            value "OK".               88 lnk-ko            value "KO".            05 lnk-file-status      pic x(2).            05 lnk-status-message   pic x(50).

In the next two chapters we’ll see how to transform it in a Web Service through the Service Bridge facility, with and without isCOBOL IDE.