What was New in Version 10.7

This document covers the following topics:

Increased Platform Support

  • Intel Linux
    EntireX now supports SuSE Linux ES 15 and Red Hat 8 for Intel Linux platforms.

  • zLinux
    EntireX now supports Red Hat 8 under zLinux.

Note:
For Linux platform Red Hat 8 (Intel and zLinux) you need to install the package libnsl, which is not included in the default installation.
Additionally, if you want to link your own C applications with EntireX libraries, you need to install package glibc-devel.
See also Linux Prerequisites.

REST Enhancements

  • Generation of Adapter Assets via REST
    See EntireX Adapter Enhancements below.

  • API Enablement
    Users of webMethods Integration Server version 10.7 will benefit from the following Integration Server enhancements:

    • For outbound mainframe REST scenarios Calling REST from COBOL | Calling REST from Natural:

      • you can select operations while importing a Swagger as a consumer when you create the REST Application Descriptor

      • additional AUTH support for Swagger consumers where you can now use API_KEY, OAuth etc.

    • For inbound mainframe REST scenarios Calling COBOL from REST | Calling Natural from REST:

      • support for additional HTTP methods such as HEAD in the created REST resource

      • support of OpenAPI 3.0 as provider when you create a REST Application Descriptor

    For more information refer to your Integration Server 10.7 Release Notes and Documentation.

Enhanced CICS Support

  • CICS Socket Listener User Transaction Support
    With User Transaction Support, RPC requests run in separate CICS tasks, the user transactions. This, together with a customized name of the user transaction, is useful for accounting purposes.

    For more information on running CICS programs in a separate user transaction, see:

EntireX Adapter Enhancements

  • Generation of Adapter Assets via REST
    A REST API is now provided for the following actions:

    • Creating adapter connections, adapter services, and adapter listeners

    • Updating adapter connections, adapter services, and adapter listeners

    • Extracting IDL

    • Extracting IDL and creating a listener connection service

    See Extracting IDL using the REST API and Creating or Updating Connections using the REST API in the EntireX Adapter documentation.

  • FIPS-140 Compliant SSL Communication
    EntireX Adapter now supports FIPS-140 compliant SSL communication. See FIPS Mode under Configuring Direct RPC.

Designer Enhancements

  • In the EntireX perspective, the deprecated Navigator view has been replaced by the Project Explorer view.

EntireX RPC Server Enhancements

Security Enhancements

  • Authentication using SSL Client Certificates
    EntireX Broker on z/OS supports authentication of participants with their SSL certificate. See Using SSL Certificates for Authentication in the EntireX Security documentation for z/OS. See also SSL/TLS Changes under Other Changes and Enhancements below.

  • FIPS-140 Compliant SSL Communication for RPC Servers
    Parameter fips_mode has been added to enable FIPS-140 compliant SSL communication. Available for:

    • EntireX RPC Server for CICS ECI | CICS Socket Listener | IBM MQ | IMS Connect | Java | XML/SOAP | AS/400

    • RPC-ACI Bridge

    • Listener for IBM MQ | Listener for XML/SOAP

    • EntireX Java clients

    See SSL/TLS Parameters for SSL Clients under SSL/TLS, HTTP(S), and Certificates with EntireX in the platform-independent Administration documentation.

    The following EntireX RPC servers can be administered using Command Central. Here you can specify parameter FIPS-140 mode under Broker Configuration:
    CICS Socket Listener | IBM MQ | IMS Connect | Java | XML/SOAP.

    The corresponding parameter BrokerFipsMode is also provided if you are using the Command Central command-line interface.

  • FIPS-140 Compliant SSL Communication for EntireX Adapter
    EntireX Adapter now supports FIPS-140 compliant SSL communication. See FIPS Mode under Configuring Direct RPC.

  • FIPS-140 Compliant SSL Communication on z/OS
    All commponents on z/OS can be FIPS-enabled, see Achieving FIPS Compliance in the z/OS Administration documentation.

EntireX Broker Enhancements

  • Authentication using SSL Client Certificates
    EntireX Broker on z/OS supports authentication of participants with their SSL certificate. See new attribute CERT-AUTHENTICATION below and Using SSL Certificates for Authentication in the EntireX Security documentation for z/OS.

  • New Attributes
    The following new attributes can be defined:

  • New CIS Version 12

    Note:
    PROCESS-ID and THREAD-ID are only available with Broker kernel and Broker stub of EntireX version 10.7 and above. Java clients and Java servers of EntireX version 10.7 do not support PROCESS-ID and THREAD-ID.

  • User Request Handling
    With new operating commands FREEZE and RUN you can freeze and resume user request processing in Broker. See Participant-specific Commands under Operator Commands in the z/OS Administration documentation.

Documentation Enhancements

  • Monitoring
    A new section introduces the various monitoring approaches provided by EntireX. It also shows common scenarios using these approaches. Links are provided to other sections of the EntireX documentation, where these approaches are described in greater detail. See Monitoring EntireX.

Other Changes and Enhancements

  • Enhanced Socket Pool Management for Broker Stubs
    With new environment variables ETB_POOLSIZE and ETB_POOLTIMEOUT you can configure the size of the socket pool and define the maximum wait time for a free TCP/IP connection. See Configuring the Socket Pool under Linux | Windows.

  • Additional Special Character Support

    • The following special characters are now additionally supported in IDL group and parameter names: ø, Ø, å, Å. See Rules for Coding Group and Parameter Names in the IDL Editor documentation.

    • If you are extracting from a Natural RPC environment, you can additionally replace special characters ø, Ø, å, Å in Natural parameter names with underscores. See Extracting IDL Parameter Names in the IDL Extractor for Natural documentation.

  • SSL/TLS Changes
    To make sure that each SSL participant (thread) presents a valid certificate for authentication using SSL client certificates, existing SSL functionality has changed as follows:

    • The ACI function SETSSLPARMS no longer applies to all threads. Instead, this function needs to be performed for each thread to create an SSL connection to the broker. This is relevant only if you are using native ACI programming in combination with threads.

    • When you use SSL transport, socket pooling (environment variable ETB_SOCKETPOOL) is ignored. graphics/toc_closed.png More info

    Note:
    These changes apply to all platforms where the broker stub directly supports SSL/TLS transport. See Transport: Broker Stubs and APIs.

  • Trace Utility
    An additional column Certuid has been introduced between columns Userid and Token. It displays the user ID to which the SSL certificate is assigned. This applies only to RACF under z/OS.