Communications Partners
In a typical scenario, a user program wants to communicate with
a resource manager program. These two programs are called communications
partners. In the following figure, A is the partner of B,
and B is the partner of A. In a CS collection, user programs can be
located on z/VM,
DOS, NetWare, Windows®, AIX® , or OS/2® systems. Resource manager
programs can be located on z/VM, AIX, OS/2,
or NetWare systems.
However, there could be a virtual machine in the middle that allows
for communications between the two partner programs. This
middle virtual machineis called an intermediate server, as shown in the following figure.
For a connection outside your local system within a TSAF collection, the TSAF virtual machine is an intermediate server. For a connection outside your local system within a CS collection, CP is an intermediate server. For a connection outside of the TSAF collection, the AVS virtual machine is an intermediate server. TSAF and AVS are special types of intermediate servers called communications servers. Note that for terminology purposes, even if a request is routed through one or more intermediate servers, A's communications partner is B because the intermediate servers are transparent.