Re: Quick Brain trust Query - Agilysys LMS Interfaces

Hi Tom,

Yes, our middleware solution runs on the System i platform and communicates
with any TCP sockets interface, or an RS-232 serial device via an
Ethernet-to-serial converter box.It is designed to run as a sockets
interface (TCP or UDP), but I think it could handle an HTTP/HTTPS interface,
too. We really don't care what the remote system is - we communicate with a
variety of hospitality, medical, gaming, and manufacturing devices.

We do Websphere MQ, too, if that is important.

We have packaged solutions that install on the System i in a normal fashion.
They are licensed to the partition and processor group. No restrictions on
the number of connections, clients, etc. All of our communications
interfaces are native TCP or UDP, no 5250 screen scraping or emulation.
We've been over that ground and could never get the reliability we needed.

This solution is platform dependent. That is, they run on the System i and
not on Windows, Linux, etc. Our encryption and key management solutions are
platform neutral, but these communications solutions are System i only. Our
services group does work on a variety of platforms for custom development.

Patrick

On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 4:10 PM, Armbruster, Tom <
Tom.Armbruster@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Thanks, Patrick. Very good advice. Out of curiosity, do your middleware
solutions communicate with remote systems? Our business requirements will
entail utilizing our hosted application to communicate with various end
points over a secured network infrastructure, i.e. exposed SSL HTTP or
trusted network connections. Our system handles requests for numerous
clients, and each must be identifiable in some manner.



How are your solutions provided and what licensed software will be required
on our end to utilize the solutions? 5250 emulation is the immediate goal,
but an open source, or platform independent, solution is the ultimate goal.
How are your products licensed? It may be a hard sell for a platform
dependent solution considering our long term aspirations.

Tom Armbruster
Senior Software Developer
Travelocity On Location

------------------------------

*From:* Patrick Townsend [mailto:patrick.townsend@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
*Sent:* Tuesday, March 10, 2009 3:55 PM
*To:* RPG programming on the IBM i / System i
*Cc:* Armbruster, Tom
*Subject:* Re: Quick Brain trust Query - Agilysys LMS Interfaces



Tom,

We provide middleware that interfaces with the LMS system. Here are some
general thoughts on using the data queue interface:

There are up to four data queues (High priority and normal priority
receive, high priority and normal priority send) that you interface with.
You need to know which are used by the particular LMS interface, and read
and write to the correct ones. You will probably just write to the normal
priority send, and read from the normal priority receive. But check the LMS
documentation.

LMS contains some good tools to analyze transactions sent and received. You
should be familiar with them.

Usually for every transaction you send to LMS, there will be an
acknowledgement. Be sure to receive this acknowledgement and handle it.

If LMS can place transactions on your system, be aware of the timing issues
with responding. You should develop to respond quickly to various LMS
transactions.

Understand how LMS will handle duplicate transactions. For example, if you
send a transaction to LMS and you don't get a response, how will you send
the transaction again so that it does not post twice?

LMS has an option to rebuild its data queues when it starts. You might want
to turn off this option. It can create havoc with your application that may
assume that a data queue exists.

Patrick

On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 3:14 PM, Armbruster, Tom <
Tom.Armbruster@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hello all,

Before I reinvent the wheel, I want to consult the experts. An ongoing
request from our system users has been for our ticketing system to
interface with the room charge accounting system available in Agilysys's
Lodging Management System (LMS). I have some of the API docs which I
can program against, but we all know that best practices are the best
place to start. I'm just curious if any of our members have had the
necessity to interface with the LMS system remotely and are willing to
share their methods.

Thanks in advance for your expert advice.

Tom Armbruster
Senior Software Developer
Travelocity On Location
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