Re: Green-screen versus browser

[Scott Klement <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> A simple example:  PC user is signed onto the iSeries thru Client
> Access/5250.  User selects option 5=display details from a subfile
> display.  Instead of the RPG program sending another 5250 display
> screen down to the user, you want to establish a socket connection to
> that PC, send the data to the PC program on the other end of the
> socket, and have that program put a WinForm window up to display the
> option 5=display data.

Personally, I'd rather see the entire application be GUI or the entire 
application be green screen. I don't like it when someone mixes the two 
like this. (Just my opinion, of course.)

> How would you go about doing that?  It is not easy, if not impossible.
> The 5250 interactive job cannot start a thread to handle the socket
> link because interactive jobs on the as400 cant multi thread.

Shrug...  The spawn() API could be used so that you have multiple jobs 
instead of multiple threads. You could have one job that reads the socket 
and write's the data to a data queue.  Another that reads a data queue and 
puts the results onto the socket.  Then the interactive job could work 
purely with data queues, which can be attached to the display file to 
allow multiplexing.

Like I said, I don't like this type of coding. I'd rather see all 5250 or 
all GUI. And that's my recommendations to programmers who are trying to 
implement this. But if you MUST mix them for some reason, it's not 
impossible.