Mule ESB z/OS integration - mule

Needed some information on mainframe integration from Mule ESB Enterprise v 3.4 with z/OS. We don't have CICS Transaction Gateway setup and are using CICS Transaction Server v 3.2. Please let me know if there is an out-of-the-box way to achieve this integration (connection + data access {read+write}) to z/OS.
TIA.

I don't have details for a mainframe specific implementation, but I've been working with Mule for a while now and might be able to help you get to a solution.
Mule is a standalone server that runs on a machine that has Java installed on it. If z/OS has Java installed, you may be able to unpack the Mule package and start it right away. Just make sure JAVA_HOME and PATH are set properly. MULE_HOME gets set during the startup

We have good success with Mule and CICS. In our case, we use MQ to get transactions into CICS, but pretty much any method is possible - even batch, if volume is low. We've created Mule connectors for some key apps, and this makes it drop-dead simple to create complex Mule flows that drive CICS (or other mainframe services).

Related

Mule ESB WebsphereMQ connection with JMS connector works in Mule Design, but not standalone server

I am new to Mule and followed this blog to create a "websphere-mq connector" through the jms connector. I am using the community edition.
In order to connect to the websphere mq server, I must run the application under a specific Windows username. Running the mule application in Mule Design under the specific username, I am able to connect and receive messages. However, I am unable to connect to the websphere mq server through the standalone application running on a windows server. I changed the user on the service that is running mule to the specific user but am unable to get authorization to the websphere mq server.
Any additional insight would be much appreciated.
I would suggest reviewing the "Getting going without turning off security" article for an introduction to MQ security. This might help get the MQ system correctly configured.
The stand alone application runs the Tanuki Software wrapper as the user assigned to the environment variable %USERNAME% in windows. Even though I updated the user in the Mule service to run as the approved user, the wrapper will take the environment variable.
To solve the problem, I updated the wrapper.conf file to include the following:
set.USERNAME=<approvedUsername>
the environment variable %USERNAME% is now set to the approved username, in which mule will allow the JMS connector to the authenticate with the correct username.

Mule ESB Instance Monitoring

what is the best way to monitor the Mule ESB instances. Is there a way i can get alerted when my mule instance goes down for some reason. I have 4 instances of Mule running and how will I come to know if 1 of them got down due to some reason.
Thanks!
I assume you are running community edition? (Enterprise edition provides a Management Console which allows you to define alerts). If you are using CE, then you are able to enable JMX monitoring on the instances and then use one of many ways to verify based on JMX info, whether your server is running. One way is to write your own application that retrieves JMX data programmatically and act accordingly.
HTH
If you are using Mule EE, you can use MMC to monitor all your instances as Gabriel has already suggested. My suggestion would be to install MMC inside tomcat on a separate server. This is to ensure that even if your Mule Server crashes or goes down, your MMC is still running and can send you alerts about your Mule server downtime. You can refer below link for details on how to setup server down and up alerts.
https://developer.mulesoft.com/docs/display/current/Working+With+Alerts
Additionally I would recommend to use MMC with database persistence to ensure you have ability to recover MMC workspace even if your MMC server crashes. You can refer about MMC setup with DB persistence at below link.
https://developer.mulesoft.com/docs/display/current/Configuring+MMC+for+External+Databases+-+Quick+Reference
If you don't have Mule EE, you may want to explore other tools or customer alerting applications as suggested by Gabriel.
HTH
You can set up a JMX agent by adding the following lines into your "conf/wrapper.conf" file :
wrapper.java.additional.19=-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote
wrapper.java.additional.20=-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=10055
wrapper.java.additional.21=-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=false
wrapper.java.additional.22=-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false
wrapper.java.additional.23=-Djava.rmi.server.hostname=127.0.0.1
don't forget to change the values accordingly. Also you can implement SSL authentication with a few extra lines.
Now once your monitoring platform is set up you can always activate Java pollers and start the server.

How to verify if Mule server is deployed or not?

How to verify if Mule server is deployed or not? My intention is to send a query(HTTP or something else) to Mule server and to see if it is up or down. This I want to do when no applications are deployed on the Mule server. This is to do validation post Mule server deployment. I am using community edition v3.3.0 and v3.4.0. I cannot use Mule EE version.
Thanks and Regards
Jai
That seems like a good idea.
The other option is to have you mule app sending a notification when started.
I know you said you can't use EE but the MMC module is probably what you need.
In any case they only problem with the previous approach is if you have a connectivity problem in the server you have your mule app running, but I reckon in that case you'll have several other problems.
HTH
Whenever hit the http we can see the response in console or in the logs.
First check whether your sever is running or not, give the proper url.

ActiveMQ integration with Weblogic

I have been tasked with integrating ActiveMQ with Weblogic (v 10.3.6.0).
I have downloaded ActiveMQ v 5.10.0, installed it upon the server and browsed to localhost:8161/admin in order to confirm that ActiveMQ is running.
I'm not sure how to progress from here in order to complete my goal. This link:
http://activemq.apache.org/weblogic-integration.html
.. suggests that there are two approaches to deploying ActiveMQ on Weblogic: either deploying a broker as an application or using a J2EE Connector. I'm investigating the latter approach as I have now installed ActiveMQ on the server (which means that I already have a running broker, I assume) but can't find much useful information on the Net about how to do this.
This page:
http://activemq.apache.org/resource-adapter.html
... suggests that it can be done via a JCA Resource Adapter but again does not give any details on how to do it.
If anyone has any advice or guidance, I'd appreciate it.
Thanks in advance.
Did you try this: http://activemq.apache.org/how-to-deploy-activemq-ra-versionrar-to-weblogic.html?
You will have to grab the resource adapter from maven.
Not that your local installation will help you much expect for testing etc. You should deploy AMQ inside WebLogic if you want it to serve as the JMS layer of WebLogic - otherwise a totally standalone installation is fine. But then you're done, and I suspect you want the deployed version non the less.

Mule ESB integration with web applications

We have more than 5 corporate applications running on different servers with technologies like spring, struts communication between these application is point to point. We are planning to migrate this to ESB using Mule.
I didnt quite understand how mule works i have few doubts,
Mule is running in a different server do i need to deploy all my 5 aplications into the mule server.
I have spring application delployed on a tomcat server how this application is going to receive messages through mule or what are the configuration changes i need to do in my server or mule server.
Any advice or tutorials.
You need not deploy all you 5 applications in the Mule Server.
You said that all your application are currently point to point (which means that all are talking/communicating now through http protocol), similarly you can also use mule's http endpoints to communicate with all the 5 applications.
I.e. the spring application talking to another spring application can be modified to Spring application talking to Mule and Mule in turn talking to another Spring application .
You must learn the basics from the Documentation
http://www.mulesoft.org/documentation/display/current/Mule+Fundamentals --> browse through the navigation on the lefthand side.
Mule is an integration tool. you no need to change any of your existing applications. All you need is to develop an mule application which can do the mediation/orchestration.
For connecting with your spring application you no need to change any configuration you need to use http:outbound connector inside your mule flow
Just go through http://www.mulesoft.org/documentation/display/current/HTTP+Transport+Reference
So mule is based on SOA principle, so your 5 corporate service need not to be their in a single system. so if you want to consume the service/functionality of any of your 5 application, expose those service as web service, cloud be soap or rest. And you can call those service inside your mule. so in this case you have to create only 5 connection and where ever required you can refer to those connection inside mule configuration file.
#saravanan shanmugavel you need to use Mule ESB to orchestrate the communication between these application...ESB came into the picture to remove your point to point communication...you can create a proxy service for each of your service and one flow which will orchestrate communication between all...
All you need to do is change the application that is configurable according to mule server.
Please refer below link that will be helpful for understanding of mule that helps you better orchestrate communication between all.
https://docs.mulesoft.com/