RACFBroker is a two tier application system that provides IBM mainframe RACF functions to network
applications. RACF is an abbreviation for "Resource Access Control System". RACF is the standard
security system used on IBM mainframes. It's used for user authentication via name/password as
well as for resource access control based on user policies. Using RACFBroker from XPS, a subset of
RACF functionality can now be made available to Java network applications. The host side algorithms are
provided by RACFBroker/z, an attachment for XPSDaemon from XPS. The latter enables the creation of a
secure infrastructure over TCP/IP for the communication between network based Java applications and
mainframes.
The client side is implemented by RACFBroker/j. RACFBroker/j is a Java application package as well as
a Java application programming interface. RACFBroker/j enables Java applications to communicate with
RACF providing various access methods. RACFBroker/j is based on
TRex from XPS which implements the network tier of
the secure tunnel over TCP/IP that can be established with XPSDaemon.
The following list shows exemplary the flow of processing in a Java application using the RACFBroker
functions:
- Create of a RACFBroker instance.
- Establish a connection with RACFBroker/z using
the RACFBroker instance created in step 1.
- Create a RACFBrokerRequest instance.
- Fill the RACFBrokerRequest instance with
request-specific information.
- Transfer the request to RACFBroker/z.
- Evaluate the returned information.
- Repeat steps 4. to 6. (optional).
- Terminate the connection with RACFBroker/z.
