Re: Screen Scraper? - no more

Nathan,

Web-enabled is an interesting term and used in many ways. It could mean
something as simple as connecting to a host over the web - even with green
screen. My definition of web-enabling is providing a way to get to your
green screen application over the web, inside a browser, with appropriate
security - the basics. Add to that a GUI (a web look and feel) and tight
integration to the HTML (and related) languages, and your green screen app
is truly web-"enabled". That is not the same as a web-"application" - which
is HTML based and served by an HTTP server. I always take care to
differentiate the two.

Extending and integrating the green screen application is a whole ~world~ of
options - I will offer some off the top of my head. It could be to add new
business rules in your GUI to your green screen application. Adding GUI
controls such as drop-downs can help tremendously. You may change the
workflow to improve user efficiency by reducing the number of steps for
individual tasks. Adding new graphical forms to the workflow can extend the
original application. Retrieving drop-down list contents from the iSeries
database is a good example of integrating. Linking the application data to
word processing, spreadsheets and email is basic desktop integration. Then
go further by linking the application to imaging systems, PC databases,
other non-iSeries databases, etc.. And now, the world of web services has
opened up to us - linking your green screen application to externally
provided web services would also be integration.

The simplest examples are the ones I hear requested often. Pressing a button
and having the green screen data in an excel spreadsheet and graphed
automatically seems to be one that gets most users excited. Writing letters
with one click also seems to be another common request. Also, I get a lot of
people wanting menu systems and/or function keys in a GUI tree control
format rather than our traditional one-page-at-a-time menu systems.

Hope this helps,
Trevor

----- Original Message -----
From: "Nathan M. Andelin" Subject: Re: Is anybody using Seagull's new
Transidiom software (Screen Scraper)?


> > From: "trevor perry"
> > "Screen scraping" has gone from 'well, that still looks
> > ugly!' to 'WOW, it can do THAT?'. Not only can I make
> > green screen applications into web-enabled applications
> > that the user thinks is something completely new, but I can
> > extend and integrate that green screen application far beyond
> > what was available only a couple of years ago.
>
> Treavor,
>
> I'm not sure that "web-enabled" is the right term for the NewLook ActiveX
> control because of its connection to the Telnet Server, rather than the
HTTP
> Server, and because of its reliance on a 5250 formatted data stream
instead
> of HTML, JavaScript, etc.
>
> Nevertheless, could you share an example of what you mean by "extend and
> integrate that green screen application"?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Nathan M. Andelin
> www.relational-data.com