Taking advantage of existing System Information code and data when implementing new Open Client/Server architectures has lead designers mainly to the daunting task of integrating both worlds. This integration effort hides (encapsulates) existing systems behind consistent interfaces that relate to business process and vocabulary , hides implementation details and allows for changing or replacing implementations without affecting other systems.

Transaction processing cooperation of TP applications in both worlds -GCOS 8/TP8 and Tuxedo on distributed Open systems - has been the cornerstone of all TP interoperability solutions pervasively adopted by GCOS 8 customers. This TP cooperation foundation has just been enriched by the XA8 protocol : for GCOS 8 customers an important criterion, at the time of choosing a component-based web application server, will be its capability to support the transactional integrity when it will cooperate with TP8 applications.

The integration of e-business solutions in the GCOS 8 transaction processing environment will rely on the solutions built upon XA-compliant infrastructures : while developing and deploying e-business solutions, GCOS 8 customers are requiring the preservation of the transactional power and security of their GCOS 8 TP/DB applications. For answering to the EAI requirement, most of web application servers vendors are proposing mechanisms ("connectors") or proprietary APIs to be included in components code, complemented by MOM (Message Oriented Middleware) solutions. FlowBus is proposed by Bull for a GCOS environment and will be described hereunder.

Bull is now delivering market standard solutions targeting GCOS integration with E-infrastructure platforms offered by ISV partners of Bull (namely the WebLogic Server application server from BEA).

Bull has just announced a new family of connectors to plug seamlessly existing mainframe-based transactional applications into e-business applications named HooX (Host Object Oriented conneXion). With HooX, Bull offers developers a range of connector solutions that conform to prevailing standards and a set of tools for generating transaction components, comprising : HooX Java connectors for GCOS 8 and HooX COM + connectors for GCOS 8.