Frank, just to clarify, are these the ingredients for the new pattern: 1. Maintain the 3270 user interface paradigm; 2. Allow in-line or pop-up presentation of contextual information (signature images) based on a field value (account number) displayed in the 3270 interface; 3. If possible, eliminate the Windows application and its use of an API that the emulator provides (EHLLAPI in this case) -- "make it simpler." (I like that impulse.) ?
If I've understood the basic ingredients correctly, I can think of at least a couple options. In no particular order: A. IBM's emulators (Personal Communications and Host On-Demand) support platform-agnostic Host Access Class Libraries (HACL). A HACL program could be invoked by the user via hotkey which would then provide the same function. This is Java coding with well-documented class libraries (HACL), so it should be comfortable and familiar to anyone with Java programming skills. It works on any platform that supports the IBM emulators: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, etc. (I would probably use HACL rather than macros for this use case to get some more flexibility and power.) The HACL program (applet) can be stored and maintained on any HTTP server accessible from the client. B. Another simple way to do this would be to change the 3270 presentation very slightly so that the account number appears somewhere on screen more or less like this: http://xyz.ab/n?ABC54321 where ABC54321 is the account number. The account number could even have a different attribute to make it stand out (and the http://xyz.ab... part maybe gray on black or something like that). The xyz.ab part refers to a short internal Web server URL accessible from the client. That in turn opens a Web page to that Web server, and the Web application would pick up the account number and display the desired results in the Web browser. The reason this sort of approach would work is that many terminal emulation programs -- including IBM's Personal Communications and Host On-Demand, but also some others (that copied IBM?) -- will automatically turn anything that looks like a Web address into a clickable link. If that clickable link then happens to go to a Web application that grabs some of the information from the URL (account number) and processes it to display other results, great. All you have to do is prepend "http://xyz..."; in front and the (modern) terminal emulator will take care of making that a clickable hotspot for the user. Well over a decade ago I put in a requirement to implement this feature, and IBM did. I guess I'll take credit at least if nobody else wants it. :-) The intention was to make it really easy to bridge between 3270 and Web presentations on a flexible, ad hoc basis. And so it is. As said, I don't think the whole URL string has to have the same 3270 display attributes -- you can have the first part gray and the latter part green, or whatever. It requires changing the 3270 presentation slightly, and then of course you have to have a "catcher" Web application that knows what to do with such a URL. You'd also need to make sure the user's Web browser presents the information in the right spot in the right way, so you might have some Javascript to do window positioning (also letting the browser know that's OK, that this particular Web site should be allowed to pop up windows and resize them). This works really well if you already have a Web application that can display the information you need, though it's best if you set up a "tiny URL" entry point if you don't have one already so that you don't have to spend too many characters (gray or otherwise) inside the 3270 presentation. You could even try hidden text for the first part of the URL and see if the emulator still likes that. It might. I'm not sure which hotkey is mapped to URL clicking or whether it's remappable, but probably yes, there is that flexibility. Or the user can just click on it. Probably, though, you'll have some keyboard jockeys who will prefer the hotkey approach, and thus you'll want to make sure you can tie that specific hotkey to a "click on the URL" action. Yes, that's doable one way or another, at least in IBM's emulators. Note that the URL can point directly to a Web application running on z/OS. No separate servers are required. C. IBM GDDM (Graphical Data Display Manager), which is supported in Personal Communications for example. That is, you can embed graphical content directly in the 3270 presentation -- 3270 with GDDM supports that. Signature images are a classic use case for GDDM, in fact. There are absolutely zero client requirements except to have a 3270 terminal emulator with GDDM support -- everything else is handled and maintained on the host side, including deciding which function keys bring up particular image data. This would likely be the most elegant solution for the 3270 enthusiast user in part because it would maintain single "plane." rather than pop-up windows. D. GDDM is about adding image content to 3270 presentations. The converse (obverse?) of GDDM would be to bring the 3270 content, look-and-feel, and most behaviors into a Web browser. That would be Rational Host Access Transformation Services (HATS) within the IBM portfolio. HATS can do many things, but one thing it can do very well is present a high fidelity 3270 terminal emulation environment using HTML and Javascript ("Classic Terminal" template), and then that presentation of course can also have in-line image content added. However, if you're addressing the needs of "hardcore" 3270 interface users, even HATS and "Classic Terminal" might be too much too soon. It depends on whether and how quickly you want to move them into Web user interfaces. If these users love to do their own keyboard remapping, run client macros, do a lot of special printing, run other client/server API applications, or otherwise have "hardcore" emulator needs then one of the other options might be better. "It depends." Hope that helps, and please follow up if I didn't explain these ideas clearly enough. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Timothy Sipples GMU VCT Architect Executive (Based in Singapore) E-Mail: [email protected] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
