Re: Alternate UI to RPG

I don't do a lot of re-purposing of 5250 specific apps, but I have an interesting option you could consider depending on complexity.

I did this once as an example for a customer on re-purposing an existing display file app without carving out the logic into a separate program.

Take your existing 5250 interactive app and change it to pass parms in and out of it. One controlling parm would be B/I for batch-web or interactive.

In the case of the (I)nteractive parm, assume running from interactive 5250 session and use standard display file logic.

In the case of the (B)atch-web parm, use the parms to drive input to the program and possibly output of return data as well. In this case you would make the open and write format statements conditioned so they only happen when "I" is passed.

Now you have a program that can be called like a logic module or used as a 5250 interactive program without having to carve the logic into a second program.

You just add a little complexity to the display file and parm handling.

Just an idea if you don't want to maintain logic in 2 places, although there are always service programs or copy books for that part of it.

Have fun.

Regards,
Richard Schoen
Director of Document Management
e. richard.schoen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
p. 952.486.6802
w. helpsystems.com






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message: 1
date: Wed, 3 Oct 2018 18:12:37 +1000
from: Don Brown <DBrown@xxxxxxxxxx>
subject: [WEB400] Alternate UI to RPG



We have built a web portal to allow web integration for external clients and this is using php with xmlservice and it is working very nicely.

Now we want to provide some of the internal functions currently only available in 5250 green screen.

NOT looking for 3rd party solutions ... No vendors please.

The application is large and we are looking at the 80/20 rule. 20% of the menu options are accessed 80% of the time.

My question/enquiry is to people that have been down this path - somewhat regardless of whether they used PHP or nodeJS or Python or ???

Did you modify the existing RPG to enable input from either 5250 Interactive Green Screen AND Web or did you separate the screen logic to new programs or how did you retain the investment in the existing program logic.

Would be interested in any comments

Cheers



Don Brown