IBM BPM, V8.0.1, All platforms > Authoring services in Integration Designer > Services and service-related functions > Access external services with adapters

Limitations for adapter imports and exports

The limitations or restrictions when using the external service or external data wizards or the imports and exports they produce are listed here.

The following sections have limitations:


General limitations


Connections

For CICS and IMS, you can statically set values on the connectionSpec and interactionSpec properties. You cannot dynamically (programmatically) set or get their values.


Languages


C, COBOL and PL/I

For a C union, PL/I union, COBOL REDEFINE, or a sparsely populated commarea, all of the data is converted on a best effort basis. A commarea is used to pass data between transactions, however, the commarea is not necessarily filled in a transaction leading to a sparsely populated commarea which may contain old or unusable data.

If any errors are encountered while trying to convert the data from the C, COBOL, or PL/I program, they are ignored, and data conversion continues until finished. It is up to the application program to examine the returned data to ensure that it is valid.

For example, for a union or REDEFINE, an attempt will be made to convert all views of the data, so results may exist for views which are not valid. Your application program must determine which views are valid.


JMS bindings


WebSphere Business Integration adapters

The WSDL file generated when working with a WebSphere Business Integration adapter cannot be used in a web service call because the WSDL file contains import statements that do not have valid schemaLocations, which is required by WebSphere web services.


WOLA Resource Adapter

The WebSphere Optimized Local Adapter (WOLA), a type of resource adapter, supports a limited form of working with CICS channel records while exchanging data with CICS transaction systems. It allows you to work with a single container, where you would need to specify the container name in your ManagedConnectionFactory.

For example, as shown below, you can create a business object from COBOL. WOLA does not support business object creation using the COBOL (CICS Channel) option.

The RAR file used while generating the WOLA import and external service is not supported when embedded in the application. For installing it on the server, follow the steps in the topic Enabling the server environment to use optimized local adapters. The minimum version of the RAR file used should be version 2 from WebSphere Application Server for z/OS 8.0.0.3.


WebSphere runtime environment variables

WebSphere runtime environment variables are useful in situations where you have multiple modules using the same adapter. By using a variable such as FTP_SERVER_DIR when creating your import or export, you would only need to add extensions like FTP_SERVER_DIR/customer and FTP_SERVER_DIR/invoice at deployment or post-deployment time to identify the directories your service wants to use on the FTP server. You can enter these variable names when using the external service wizard to create a service and they will be passed on to the runtime.


Bidirectional support

Only ASCII characters are supported for Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI) names at run time.


Generated interfaces

An interface generated by the external service wizard cannot be shared in a library, as the interface requires other files not contained in a library.

Access external services with adapters


Related concepts:
Pattern of accessing external services with adapters
Developing services with adapters
Simple adapter wizard
Migrating applications using previous adapter levels


Related tasks:
Configure and using adapters
Create a business object from a source file


Related reference:
J2C data bindings
A closer look at business objects from data structures
J2C imports and exports at run time
Trade-offs when developing adapter imports and exports
Considerations when using adapters
Considerations when refactoring
Contributing your own external service or data wizard plug-in