Re: Webfacing within WebSphere

At 10:29 AM 5/30/2001, you wrote:
>Does anyone have a link to a site that we can use to get a taste of the
>general appearance of webfacing of 5250 applications on the AS/400? I am
>under the impression that this is one of the newest offerings within the
>WebSphere umbrella?

One of the early adopters gave a presentation at COMMON.  The following is 
a link to their website.  Click on SCREEN EXAMPLES on the left to view 
several sample screens.  Some examples have both the before (green screen) 
and after (JSP).

http://www.appcon4.com/

I saw several presentations on the new Webfacing tool at COMMON.  It comes 
free with the V5R1 development tools, which also includes all the compilers 
(Cobol, C/C++, RPG), VA Java Professional edition (includes Enterprise 
Toolkit for iSeries), CODE/400, WebSphere Studio and VARPG.  If you are on 
software subscription and have at least one of the current application 
development tools (ADT), you get the upgrades for free.  What it does is 
convert your green screen DDS into Java Server Pages (JSP) and Java 
beans.  It requires WebSphere Application Server (Standard edition which is 
free with OS/400).  It is mostly a point and click conversion.

You can use another tool (the GUI green screen editor that comes with 
Code/400 (also included in the development tools)) to add comments to the 
DDS that the Webfacing tool will see, but your normal green screen compile 
will ignore.  You can use this to do things like hiding/changing a field on 
the JSP and add links and images.  On the AS/400, the work station 
controller determines how the AS/400 application was invoked.  If from the 
web, it serves up the JSP.  If from a terminal, it serves up the 5250 data 
stream.  No changes are required to the AS/400 application code (except if 
some DDS keyword is not supported that impacts the RPG program)!  Format of 
the JSP is governed by Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and they supply you 
with an initial 10 or 15 styles to choose from.  You can also create your 
own CSS for the tool to use.  Response time is supposed to be comparable to 
5250 screens

This first version supports most, but not all the DDS 
keywords.  Downloadable updates will be available every month or so and 
they plan to have the rest of the keywords supported by the end of the 
summer.  An example of a DDS keyword that is not currently supported is the 
HLPARA keyword - but it will be supported soon, along with UIM help.  Some 
DDS keywords will never be supported.  These are the keywords that do not 
make sense in a web environment such as color (you would do this with the CSS).

You can change the JSP after it is generated, but you will loose the 
changes when you re-convert.  They are working on a tool that will let your 
merge your changes.



Dave Murvin
DRM Enterprises, Inc.
davem@drme.com

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