Glossary
Descriptions of the terms used in this documentation as they apply to z/OS® Connect.
A
- air gap
-
A security measure that consists of a physical and wireless separation between an isolated computer or network and any computer or network that is directly or indirectly connected to the internet or other insecure network.
- Ansible®
- Ansible is an open source software provisioning, configuration management, and application-deployment tool that enables infrastructure as code. For more information, see the Ansible documentation.
C
- Container
- A container is a runtime environment that runs an instance of an image.
- Container Application Software for Enterprises (CASE)
- A set of tools or programs to help develop complex applications.
- Container Orchestration
- The process of managing the lifecycle of containers, including provisioning, deployment, and availability.
- ConfigMap
- A ConfigMap is an API object used to store nonconfidential data in key-value pairs. Pods can consume ConfigMaps as environment variables, command-line arguments, or as configuration files in a volume.
- Custom Resource
- An instance of a custom resource definition. See also Custom Resource Definition
- Custom Resource Definition
- A customizable YAML file that defines a logically related group of objects in a cluster. Custom resource definitions enable a custom resource to be used like any native Kubernetes object in the cluster. See also Custom Resource.
D
- DevOps
- Development Operations A software methodology that integrates application development and IT operations so that teams can deliver code faster to production and iterate continuously based on market feedback.
- Docker
- An open platform that developers and system administrators can use to build, ship and run distributed applications.
F
- Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN)
- In Internet communications, the name of a host system that includes all of the subnames of the domain name. An example of a fully qualified domain name is rchland.vnet.ibm.com.
G
- Gradle
- Gradle is a build automation tool for multi-language software development. It controls the development process in the tasks of compilation and packaging to testing, deployment, and publishing. Supported languages include Java™, C/C++, JavaScript.
I
- Image
- For operating-system-level virtualization, an image is a read-only file that contains the source code, libraries, dependencies, tools, and other files that are needed for an application to run in a container.
- Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
- A set of software development tools, such as source editors, compilers, and debuggers, that are accessible from a single user interface.
J
- JSONata
- JSONata is a lightweight query and transformation language for JSON data. JSONata uses sophisticated query expressions with minimal syntax and built-in operators and functions for manipulating and combining data.
K
- Kubernetes
- An open source orchestration tool for containers. Often abbreviated to K8s.
M
- Mapping
- The process of transforming data from one format to another. In IBM® z/OS Connect, mapping refers to a set of JSONata expressions that define how a source JSON object is converted to a target JSON object.
- Mapping file
- A file that provides predefined mapping expressions used to transform data instances in the original data source to data instances in a target data source. In IBM z/OS Connect, a mapping file is a yaml file that stores mapping definitions.
- microservice
- A set of small, independent architectural components, each with a single purpose, that communicate over a common lightweight API.
N
- Native server
- A native server is a IBM z/OS Connect server installed using SMP/E and running natively on z/OS. For more information, see The IBM z/OS Connect native server.
- The navigation tree is located in the left panel of the z/OS Connect Designer UI, and is used to manage the artifacts in your API project.
O
- OAuth
- OAuth is an open standard for delegated authorization. The OAuth authorization framework allows a user to grant a third-party application access to their information stored with another HTTP service without sharing their access permissions or the full extent of their data. IBM z/OS Connect supports the OAuth 2.0 specification.
- OpenAPI
- An OpenAPI is a publicly available application programming interface that provides developers with programmatic access to a proprietary software application or web service. APIs are sets of requirements that govern how one application can communicate and interact with another.
- OAD (OpenAPI Definition)
- An OpenAPI Definition, sometimes called an OpenAPI Document is a self-contained or composite resource which defines or describes an API or elements of an API. The structure of the OAD uses and conforms to the OpenAPI specification. In IBM z/OS Connect, this term is used to describe a REST API definition document in JSON or YAML format.
- OAS (OpenAPI Specification)
- The OpenAPI specification (OAS) defines a standard, programming language-agnostic interface description for HTTP APIs, which allows both humans and computers to discover and understand the capabilities of a service without requiring access to source code, additional documentation, or inspection of network traffic.
- Open Container Initiative (OCI)
- The Open Container Initiative is a Linux® Foundation project to design open standards for operating-system-level virtualization, especially Linux containers. Two specifications are in development and in use: the Runtime Specification and the Image Specification. IBM z/OS Connect images are OCI-compliant. For more information, see https://opencontainers.org/.
- Operand
- An Operand constitutes all of the resource created by your Operator when a Custom Resource is created. The service component used by an Operator to execute actions.
- Operation
- An operation is an HTTP method that is used to manipulate a Path. For example, GET, PUT, POST, or DELETE. Paths are endpoints or resources that are exposed by an API.
- Operation viewer
- The operation viewer is a visual component of z/OS Connect Designer that shows a flowchart of a single REST operation.
- Operator
- An Operator is a Kubernetes-native set of resources, defined as a controller combined with one or more Custom Resource Definitions. The controller is custom code that is deployed to a Kubernetes cluster and is designed to watch for changes to custom Kubernetes resources and reacts to them.
- Operator Controller
- The engine of the Operator. It watches and reacts to create / update / delete requests on resources.
P
- Path
- A Path is a combination of a RESTful service endpoint or resource and
an operation. A resource is exposed by an API. For example,
/employees
or/catalog
. Each resource has one or more operations. For example,GET
,PUT
,POST
. - Pod
-
A group of containers that are running on a Kubernetes cluster. A pod is a runnable unit of work, which can be a either a stand-alone application or a microservice.
- Predicate
- A predicate is an expression that is used as part of a filter, specified in response conditions and consisting of a data item, an operator, and a value. In IBM z/OS Connect, a predicate is used to control response conditions and consisting of a data item, an operator, and a value. In IBM z/OS Connect, a predicate is used to control responses.
R
- Representational State Transfer (REST)
- Representational State Transfer is a software architectural style that guides the design and development of the architecture for the World Wide Web. REST defines a set of constraints for how the architecture of an Internet-scale distributed hypermedia system, such as the Web, should behave.
- Request
- In z/OS Connect Designer, a REST API request is represented as a request node in the Operation Viewer. There can be only one request for an operation..
- Response
- In z/OS Connect Designer, a REST API response represented as a response node in Operation Viewer. An operation can have many responses, such as 200, 404, 500.
- Responses
- In z/OS Connect Designer, a REST operation can have different types of responses depending on underlying conditions. The Responses node in Operation Viewer shows various response conditions.
- Response condition
- In z/OS Connect Designer, a response condition is triggered by a defined predicate.
- Repository
- A persistent storage area where images are available for download.
S
- SAF
- System Authorization Facility A z/OS interface with which programs can communicate with an external security manager, such as RACF.
- SCM
- Source Code Management or Source Control Management (SCM) is a software tool that is used by programmers to track changes to a project's code base and helps to prevent conflicts. When conflicts do arise, source code management is used to resolve those conflicts.
- Secret
- A Secret is an object that contains a small amount of sensitive data such as a password, a token, or a key. Such information might otherwise be put in a Pod specification or in a container image. Using a Secret means that you don't need to include non-confidential data in your application code.
- SMF
- System Management Facilities. A component of z/OS that collects and records a variety of system and job-related information.
W
- Web application archive (WAR) file
- A file that is used to distribute a collection of JAR-files, JavaServer Pages, Java servlets, Java classes, XML files, tag libraries, static web pages, and other resources that together constitute a web application.
- Workspace
- The main panel in the z/OS Connect Designer UI that is used to show content.
Y
- YAML
- A human-readable data-serialization language. It is commonly used for configuration files and in applications where data is being stored or transmitted.
Z
- z/OS Asset
- A representation of a resource on a z/OS application that
is exposed as an API by using z/OS Connect Designer. For
example, a service in Db2®,
getEmployee
is a z/OS Asset that corresponds to an SQL StatementSELECT * from EMP WHERE EMPID={employee ID}
.Supported z/OS applications are CICS® and Db2.