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BoomerangThree

I was wondering if I could get a little "Best Practices" tutoring / mentoring / education on the following?

I have a upcoming project in which our product which utilizes MQ Series as the messaging transport needs to be integrated to a host system running on a AS400 whos only means of communication is via their own message format and via their TCP/IP Sockets Server.

BACKGROUND

Client app is a n-tiered architecture, business layer written in "C++" that uses MQ Series as its internal transport layer.

CLient Presentation Layer communicates to business layer via XML over HTTP/S.

In most cases the transport between the business layer and remote host systems that are capable of supporting MQ Series is via MQ Series

Internal message format is XML based

THOUGHTS
1) The 1st thought I had was to front-end the host system on the AS400 with a message translator that would translate client XML messages to host specific format, allow processing on the host, translate host specific messages back to XML and return to the client application.

a) This would add a layer which I don't know what impact it will have to performance, maintenance, ect...

2) Same as #1 except that XML Translator would reside on the application server.

a) Same concerns as #1

3) Modify host system to support XML natively and confirm to client XML message format.

a) Will take even more time and resources than #1 or #2.

Thoughts, recommendations, alternatives will be greatly appriciated.
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BoomerangThree