Re: Niels IceCap 5250

I second that Nathan. Most shops want to transition, rather than tear out and replace. So anything that makes the move more comfortable will be more successful. Getting 5250 application data inside the browser is a good first step. Once you have them inside the browser, you can leverage all the tools to make that experience better. That was the whole idea back in 2002 when you and I were working on AEE (Application Execution Environment - a menuing/portal system for those of you who weren't part of the company).
And to come full circle, if the 5250 data was in a standard format, consumable by web client applications, then the two *would* converge. You might have an emulator piece that would present something that looked more 5250-ish while next to it, or within a frame of it, you could have a Rich UI application. Similar to a "portal".

I am more and more intrigued by this idea. I had only looked at the 5250 data through HTML eyes, but using JSON or XML to make it all less verbose, it could provide a handy way to leverage existing 5250 applications.

Watching with interest.

Pete


Nathan Andelin wrote:

From: Joe Pluta
As I get more involved with the Rich UI architecture of EGL, it becomes increasingly clear that trying to extend the 5250 paradigm is not going to work in the rich world.

You seem to be making two points with one statement. First, that attempting to turn a 5250 application into a rich one won't work. Second, that a "rich world" is on our doorsteps.

Both points are valid. But I'm still interested in some continuity, and a gradual transition from 5250 to rich. And a rich UI is not needed for all applications. Sometimes a simple prompt precedes a data area update, or batch job submission, for example.

The thing that would be nice, would be to deploy both rich and 5250 under a single portal, to support both interfaces during the transition. One sign-on. Both environments. A means of toggling between either. A means of communicating between both.

Nathan.