Chapter 3 Working with the AI Component Builder

Understanding AI Components

AI for CICS components are Jaguar components that provide access to one or more CICS programs. A component contains one method for each CICS program it exposes, and each method invokes exactly one CICS program.

Every component is associated with exactly one connection. The choice of connection determines which CICS programs the component's methods can invoke. All CICS programs exposed in a component must reside in a single CICS region.

After creating the component and its methods, the AI Component Builder can be used to automatically deploy it to Jaguar, where it is used to build LAN- or Web-based applications. The result is that, using the component, the client application can access several existing CICS programs that read and/or write mainframe data.

Once you have created a component and added one or more methods, you can deploy the component to Jaguar, where it can then be used by Jaguar client applications or other Jaguar components.

The person responsible for using AI for CICS components to build applications should perform the steps of the component creation process.

The rest of this section covers the following topics:

Component Properties

Before you create a component, be sure you know how COBOL datatypes map to Java datatypes. See "Supported Datatypes".

The Component Builder allows you to associate multiple methods with a single component.

For each component that you create, you must supply the following information in the Component Builder:

Table 3-2: Component properties
Tab	Field	Description
General	Name	Name used for the component when it is deployed to Jaguar.
Java package name	Components are implemented as Java classes. Java package names are used to organize Java classes hierarchically. Typically, Java package names are in reverse Internet domain name format (as in the example com.xyzcorp.app_name, where app_name is the name of the application you are building). Java package names are not the same as Jaguar package names.
Connection	Connection	Each component requires a connection. When components are created in the Component Builder, you can select an existing connection, or create a new one.

Method Properties

The Component Builder requests the following properties on the Method Properties dialog box.

Table 3-3: Method properties
Tab	Field	Description
General	Name	Name that Jaguar clients will use when invoking the method.
Description	Description of the method. An optional field.
Parameters:
Name	Java name derived from the mapped COBOL field.
Mode	Defaults to inout. To edit, click the current mode and select from the list.
Type	Jaguar datatype of each mapped COBOL field. To edit, click the current type and select from the list. See "Supported Datatypes".
COMMAREA Definition	Name of each field in the target COMMAREA definition. This field is not editable.
Result Sets	Name	Name of the result set for the OCCURS clause in the target COMMAREA definition.
Type	Jaguar datatype that maps to the COBOL field.
COMMAREA Field	Name of the field in the COMMAREA of the target COBOL program.
Target	COBOL Program	Name of the target COBOL program for this method. This field is not editable.
COMMAREA	Displays the COMMAREA for this method. This field is not editable.

Viewing Method Information

When you add a method to a component, you can select the method name and click the following tabs for information:

Details , which includes the name of each method in the component (if you have added methods), the target name, and an optional description
Interface , which shows the representation of this component using CORBA IDL (Interface Definition Language)