re: tn5250 Newbie Questions....

The transfer option used by WRQ employs the same protocol used by Client
Access. This is either LIPI on tcp/ip (licensed internal program interfaces)
or EHNTFW on the other connection types. The protocols are not widely
published; IBM does not make it easy to write to these interfaces.

There are some alternatives to buying an emulator package for its file
transfer. The best option is an FTP client, which offers good performance
and the AS/400 provides a pre-installed standard host server. Their FTP
server can also accepts and runs native batch commands. As you noted, your
AS/400 police may be understandably reluctant to open their system up to
anyone with an FTP client. However the AS/400 security is good, and a
knowledgeable admin can setup useful permissions with minimal security risk.

Another (impractical) option would be to write sockets program pair. You
would have to write the host side as well, so this is a lot of work too. And
then your host server portion would need installation on every system.

You could also look at other remote database access methods such as ODBC.
For example HiT offers an evaluation at http://www.hitsw.com/. The ODBC
approach offers generally good performance, but it's probably all licensed
software. I don't know if there are any free packages out there.

Regards and good luck, 
Barry Hansen
Software Engineer
WRQ, Inc.

> Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 08:47:28 -0500 (CDT)
> From: Larry Bottorff <prenzl@futureks.net>
> Subject: Re: tn5250 Newbie Questions....
> 
> When I log onto our AS/400 I am immediately shunted over to a COBOL app,
> end of story. I cannot get a regular, interactive AS/400 session. However,
> the client we use, WRQ Reflection, has a "transfer" option which produces
> a nice raw file transfer dialog box with quasi-SQL capabilities (and COM
> capabilities). I have no idea what protocol(s) this "transfer" option
> uses, or how it works, but if my app is going to be portable to other
> "turn-key" setups (and not require 100s of WRQ licenses or have to resort
> to VB), I'll need something with WRQ's transfer capabilities, i.e.,
> plug-and-chug, with minimal setup or changes from all the cast-in-iron
> AS/400 setups (such as my own). Is a complete AS/400 file transfer doable
> in a 5250 session?  I'm guessing CPYTOIMPF et.al. are commands issued
> during a 5250 session, i.e., they could be automated. This seems like a
> typical need, but this newbie has been hacking through a wilderness so
> far.
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