Introduction

Introduction

This guide provides an overview and guidelines for using and setting up a CA Gen Communications Bridge (Comm. Bridge). The Comm. Bridge is a CA Gen communications utility program that can be used as part of a communications infrastructure.

The following diagram shows the Comm. Bridge main GUI window.

The Comm. Bridge is a generated Windows application. It serves as a gateway component that is capable of converting the communications protocol used by its clients to the protocol supported by its target server. The Comm. Bridge can also be used in a TCP/IP network to handle large number of users, funneling many clients to a target server execution environment. The Comm. Bridge supports multiple, concurrent cooperative flows from the set of clients it serves to the target server it represents.

The supported outbound protocols and APIs include:

• TCP/IP (Sockets)
• LU6.2 (CPI-C)
• CICS External Call Interface (ECI)
• NonStop Remote Server Call (RSC/MP)

This diagram depicts client and server transports supported by Comm. Bridge.

The following items are discussed in further detail within this document:

• Conceptual information about the CA Gen Comm. Bridge in a CA Gen Client/Server Distributed Process application network
• General configuration options used to define a Comm. Bridge
• Information about configuring the Comm. Bridge for connections from CA Gen clients
• Information about configuring the Comm. Bridge for connection to a CA Gen server execution environment
• Comm. Bridge security capabilities
• Details for creating multiple Comm. Bridges on a single workstation
• Procedures to use for configuring, installing, and removing Comm. Bridges that run as Windows system services
• Test procedures for verifying proper client to server communications when using a Comm. Bridge
• Information regarding the statistics kept by the Comm. Bridge
• User exits invoked by a Comm. Bridge. User exits allow certain runtime behavior to be customized.