Re: Virtual Terminal APIs?

>  From:    robin.coles@dtn.ntl.com (Robin Coles)

>  We've got a requirement to "front end" an existing interactive program from
>  an ERP system.  The program is big and ugly and getting it to run in batch
>  will be time consuming.
>  
>  In the past we've got round this sort of thing using VB and EHLLAPI to poke
>  keystrokes into the existing program, but the client wants an AS/400 only
>  solution.
>  
>  Would we be able to do this sort of thing with the virtual terminal APIs?
>  If so, can anyone point me towards some example code.  I effectively just
>  want to feed keystrokes to an existing screen and do some basic error
>  checking, but in batch.

If you have the source code for the big & ugly ERP programs ... like in BPCS 
they are 1,000 pages of source code before external files drawn in & call 10 
more of like size ... Lansa & Seagull will take the source/400 programs & 
recompile in GUI of your choice all the way to the web if you like & soup up 
appearance & improve security, like if you are on security level 30 like we 
are.  I agree that validation in batch is better performance, but then you 
have to decide what to do with what isn't validated which is not how the ERP 
is designed.

http://www.lansa.com
http://www.seagull.com

Depending on your ERP, there are probably many outfits out there that you can 
team up with that have done this kind of work before ... I know of several 
for BPCS.  

There is a PC product for testing 400 modifications that puts all the screens 
& data into a script format which you can edit ... basically you are 
expecting the program to work a certain way & automate the feeding in of 
keystrokes & compare the results with what the results were before you 
modified the program, to see if they are correct, but if not, then tinker 
with the program, then push the button to feed in the same string of 
keystrokes ... I wish I had found out about this before our Y2K conversion.  
It costs $3k per PC seat & has a steep learning curve, but I am thinking that 
approach might be an alternative worth exploring ... I do not remember the 
name of it but it is available from

http://www.unbeatenpathintl.com/services.html

Al Macintyre  ©¿©
http://www.cen-elec.com MIS Manager Programmer & Computer Janitor
http://www.whma.org = our nitch industry has a large committee searching for 
ErPdMes products right for WHM without work-arounds, which for many members 
resemble a snipe hunt - if you are in this software business & want to fix 
your product so it will not be mistaken for what your competition has been 
doing, then you might want to join our great game.

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