Re: Alternate UI to RPG

IMHO : one of

- screen scraping (5250 => HTML), in some form
- CGI (Perotti, Rothman et al.)
- application "tampering"
- "fat client" (pc program - android app - ... + stored procedures or remote RPG call)

I worked with some homegrown tools and libraries (apart CGI), the choice is driven by the number of screen
and the time needed to "convert" a screen. And your budget, of course.
All these technologies have nearly 20 years, so I'm sure you will find all the reference you need
for a stable solution.

My best work on subject was an entire ERP screen scraped for 300 users, but I built it on top
an existing "screen scraper" written for another ERP. So I've got already user management, spools, query,
XML etc etc etc. It lasted 4 years ... until SAP got in.

I think AFAIK that the only open source screen scraper is, if still available, the Open Legacy one.
(as usual : open sourced and you know what you're doing, or buy some support thereafter).
The "milk run" with Open Legacy and Holger Scherer "public" AS/400 was ok
(login + wrkactjob + pgUp-pgDwn + F3 + logout).

Best regards and good luck !

    Davide Grandi

On 03/10/2018 10:12, Don Brown wrote:

We have built a web portal to allow web integration for external clients
and this is using php with xmlservice and it is working very nicely.

Now we want to provide some of the internal functions currently only
available in 5250 green screen.

NOT looking for 3rd party solutions ... No vendors please.

The application is large and we are looking at the 80/20 rule. 20% of the
menu options are accessed 80% of the time.

My question/enquiry is to people that have been down this path - somewhat
regardless of whether they used PHP or nodeJS or Python or ???

Did you modify the existing RPG to enable input from either 5250
Interactive Green Screen AND Web or did you separate the screen logic to
new programs or how did you retain the investment in the existing program
logic.

Would be interested in any comments

Cheers

Don Brown