SOA Software Connects Mainframes to SOA.

The article looks at how Merrill Lynch implemented Service-Oriented Legacy Architecture, a Web services initiative that reduced their information technology overhead since 2000. The objective of the project, which was headed by the company's vice president Jim Crew, was to build applications that leveraged not just the data but also the applications on the mainframe. Thus, Crew and his team used X4ML and made it part of Merrill Lynch's service-oriented architecture. Since then, the team has helped create Web services using a collection of Internet technologies like XML and SOAP to make operations available to programmers. The programmers then can create new applications in modern environments including Java from Sun Microsystems.