RE: webfacing and competing products

["Joe Pluta" <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: Steve Richter
>
> I think the problem with screen scraping is that the new end user
> application is limited to the data provided by the host
> application that is
> being scraped from.  The subfile record may only contain customer name and
> not customer number.  Also, the subfile records may only contain a page of
> the records that the user is interested in working with. ( how
> can the user
> sort on order amount when the display buffer being scraped from only
> contains 10 of the 100 orders of the customer? )  Whether the data is
> scraped from a screen or from a pre dspf buffer, it still has the same
> limitations.

Yet another reason PSC/400 differs from screen scrapers.  With PSC/400, you
can access any hidden fields on the screen.  Note that this is hidden, as
opposed to non-displayed, which means you can in effect greatly increase the
real estate of the web version.

This is a basic tenet of the intrusive architecture.  It allows you to add
web-specific features to the web version of an application that do not
interfere with the non-web-enabled function of the same program.  So, for
example, if you wanted a link to an image, you could easily include it as a
hidden field with PSC/400.  To do the same thing with a screen scraper you
would have to find an "empty" spot on your screen to stick the field.

This is only one of the many benefits to be derived from a JSP approach.
Another benefit is that, since you're using a JSP, you can EASILY invoke
custom Java code.  Since a JSP is actually a Java servlet running on the
host, the JSP can directly invoke JavaBeans which can in turn access the
database and even call RPG programs to retrieve additional information as
needed (such as, say, the current valid values for a field).  This sort of
interaction is beyond the capabilities of a screen scraper, which is tied to
the 5250 data stream.

Hopefully I'm making clear how different JSP/servlet technology is from 5250
data stream scraping, and how much more flexible and powerful JSP/servlet
is.  There is no comparison; they are as different as DB2 and dBASE.

Joe