Micro Focus International Ltd. (Micro Focus), a leading global enterprise development company for legacy systems, today announced enhancements to Component Generator that enable users to effortlessly access CICS mainframe data and business processes across the latest platform technology. These updates include support for WAP and J2ME protocols for wireless devices and support for mapping mainframe data to XML Document Type Definitions (DTDs), which allows business-to-business sharing of mainframe data in XML.

"Component Generator's functionality is certain yo have a dramatic impact on Micro Focus customers with a substantial mobile workforce," said Tony Hill, CEO of Micro Focus. "Now workers can access critical information housed in enterprise systems regardless of location, driving new levels of productivity. The additional ease with which business partners can exchange information via DTDs will certainly increase efficiency and reduce costs associated with sharing data. These enhancements illustrate Micro Focus' commitment to helping customers extend the life and increase the value of their legacy investments."

Component Generator enables IT organizations to capture complete CICS business processes and automatically produces industry-standard components in the form of JavaBeans, EJBs, COM and XML that are reusable throughout the enterprise. Component Generator generates the entire component, middleware and back-end source code needed to access mainframe CICS applications with the latest technologies. No hand coding or changes to legacy systems is required. With the addition of this Web-based update, users can now access the data and functionality of their legacy applications remotely. This new feature enables wireless connectivity to CICS mainframe applications and business workflows through WAP and J2ME enabled devices including Palm, PocketPC and mobile phones.

Additionally, Component Generator can visually map mainframe data to vertical-industry DTDs and quickly generate the required XML. This allows businesses to easily share mainframe data with their business partners without undertaking a major programming effort or making changes to their existing CICS code.

In Giga Information Group's research entitled Tools for Developing Enterprise Applications by Carl Zetie, Director, "In the past, prior to the adoption of component-based design, individual applications could be designed largely independently of one another, although frequently deriving from an enterprise business model and sharing an enterprise data model. Today, applications may well share a common deployment architecture in the form of application servers and other middleware and share common business logic implemented as middleware components. The interdependencies, and therefore, the need for tools and process to manage development, are greater than ever, but the potential rewards in productivity, reliability, scalability, flexibility and the ability to respond rapidly to changing business needs are correspondingly greater."

About Micro Focus

Micro Focus is an industry leader in COBOL development solutions spanning traditional maintenance and program understanding to business rule mining, Web-enablement and user-interface transformation. The company indicates that there are 70,000 licensed users at more than 7,000 sites around the world. Micro Focus offers a breadth of platform support, performance and scalability, and a comprehensive suite of development and integration environments. Founded in 1976, Micro Focus is a global company that employs more than 450 people worldwide, with principal offices in the United Kingdom and United States. For more information, visit www.microfocus.com.

Micro Focus is a registered trademark of Micro Focus International Ltd. All other products mentioned in this article are property of their respective owners.