IBM IBM Z Application Assist Processor (zAAP)

The IBM® Z Application Assist Processor (zAAP) is a specialty engine that provides an execution environment for certain service-oriented architecture (SOA) technologies, such as Java and XML.

TheIBM Z Application Assist Processor (zAAP) is a specialty engine that can run eligible Java and XML processing for database workloads. zAAP specialty engines are designed to free general computing capacity and lower software costs for certain web-based and SOA-based DB2® workloads, such as Java and XML.

The amount of general-purpose processor savings varies based on the amount of workload that the zAAP specialty engines run, among other factors.

Java

zAAP specialty engines might help increase general-purpose processor productivity and might lower the overall cost of computing for Java technology-based applications that run on z/OS®. zAAP specialty engines are designed to operate asynchronously with the general processors to run Java programming under control of the IBM Java virtual machine (JVM). They can help reduce the demands and capacity requirements on general-purpose processors, which might then be available for reallocation to other mainframe workloads.

XML

zAAP specialty engines can help simplify and reduce server infrastructures by enabling the development of XML-based applications that are integrated with existing data stores. z/OS XML System Services (z/OS XML), is a system-level XML parser that is integrated with the base z/OS operating system and designed to deliver an optimized set of services for parsing XML documents. DB2 uses z/OS XML System Services for non-validation and validation parsing for a portion of SQL/XML processing. For applications that run locally on z/OS and insert, update, or load XML data into tables, DB2 starts z/OS XML, which runs on zAAP specialty engines. The remaining DB2 XML processing is run on general-purpose processors.