<p>A system is provided for communicating data in a mainframe-based computing environment. The system may include an application server tier configured to receive and translate data communications from at least one communication medium into at least one extensible language. The system may also include a mainframe system including an enterprise application integration framework structured for receiving data communicated from an application server tier and a business rules engine based on at least one extensible language. The business rules engine may be configured to trigger at least one rule in association with data received by the mainframe system. Also, the mainframe system may be configured to generate an extensible language based reply message in response to the data communicated from the application server tier, which may be configured to transform reply messages received from the mainframe system into a format suitable for communication through the communication medium.</p>