Re: Web-Facing and 5250 removal -- WEB400

On 10/05/2004, at 4:54 AM, CZE Midrange wrote:

I have heard that the web-facing procedures effectively run as "batch jobs" in the operating system and that IBM sells you only the "governed" CPW machines, effectively shutting down most/all of the interactive feature? Is this true? What specific effects does this have on typical interactive programs that handle data entry or inquiry?

It depends on what you mean by 'batch' jobs and what you mean by 'web facing'. Any job that performs 5250 I/O consumes Interactive CPW regardless of whether it is a batch or interactive job unless something has been done to the job to change that. You can prove this by acquiring a display device from a submitted job and see that it uses Interactive CPW.

If you mean the IBM Webfacing product then yes, your terminal sessions consume Batch CPW **IF** you are on the 800 series hardware or later. On earlier hardware they consume Interactive CPW. The only other non-intrusive web-enabling product that allows terminal sessions to consume Batch CPW is aXes (US distributor is Linoma Software at http://www.linomasoftware.com) from Arterial Software.

The intent of both these products is to allow you to run existing 5250 applications on Standard model (i.e., zero interactive capacity) systems.

If you buy a zero interactive system you cannot run a normal 5250 workload without either using Webfacing, aXes, or one of the intrusive converters such as those from Seagull, or Pluta Brothers, etc.

What about heavy transactional apps like Warehouse Management...through an RF device?

Since most of these connect via standard Telnet they require Interactive CPW to support the workload.

If I ran an old fashioned 5250 program and did not send it through the "converter", would the job crawl slower than a turtle on valium? What about performance in general? Are HTML pages through web browser portals less stable than the good old dumb terminal or is there no real difference?

Even on a zero interactive system there is enough Interactive CPW to run a very tiny amount of 5250 workload. This is intended for system administration and but one very light user is not likely to affect the system adversely.

Again, it depends on what you mean by stability but in general web applications are just as stable as 5250 applications (allowing for the fact that you have probably moved to Windows and Internet Explorer which are inherently unstable environments). Considering that most of the application is still running at the host (OS/400 therefore very stable) the only questionable part is the client.

What about a simple thing like your sign-on to qinter in the morning? Are you visible running out of qinter? Are any jobs running out of qinter if they are web-faced?

Just because a job is running in QINTER does not mean it is an interactive job. Issue SBMJOB CMD(DLYJOB 10) JOBQ(QINTER) to see what I mean. What makes it an interactive job is that a user signed on using a signon screen managed by the subsystem. Since non-intrusive web-enablers such as IBM Webfacing and aXes use terminal devices the user jobs still run in QINTER (or where ever the Workstation Entry routes the device). Note: I have some recollection that IBM Webfacing uses its own named devices and so may route to a different subsystem but as I said previously the subsystem has no effect on the job type. Subsystems are just a convenient way of grouping related types of work.

What about printkeys?

What about them? Their use depends on the application and the web-enabling tool but be aware the browser-enabled applications can make use of the browser's print facilities.

How do the "green screens" look appearance wise if you are only converting them, not modifying them?

Again, that depends on the product you choose for web enabling. Some are fairly ugly until you customise the screens. Others provide reasonable effects straight out of the box. Since this is an aesthetic factor you should look at examples on the various vendor's web sites and trial the most promising ones to see for yourself.

Anything you can think of would be very helpful to us in making this tough decision to convert to a web-sphere operation.

You do not have to convert to Websphere to web-enable your applications. That is the direction IBM would like you to take but Websphere is a nice idea badly implemented. It is simply too complex and resource hungry to bother with for most OS/400 shops. aXes does not require Websphere or Java and so runs with much less system overhead than the alternatives, it also does not need to read or modify your source code like the intrusive tools, nor does it require a conversion effort or complex configuration.

**Disclaimer: I have an interest in aXes.

Regards,
Simon Coulter.
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