Webfacing all or nothing?

[Didjit]

Question. My shop is in the process of rewriting one of our main apps.
Unfortunately, we are doing this in phases, so we cannot just rip the app
up all at once.

Question, is it possible to Webface only certain screens
and if the screen has not been webfaced, then fall back into 5250? We want
this to be seamless to the users, IE one client. I know 5250 can be
streamed to a browser, so I'm guessing Websphere would need to be
configured to know what to serve up to the user (webfaced screen, or 5250
screen). Is this possible?

Thanks

Chris

[marty]

The scenerio that you are talking about is more characteristic of a
Windows Screen scaper such as Seaguls's GUI. Basically if you choose
not to Webface a 5250 screen in IBM's Webfacing you will simply get a
not-too-friendly error message in the web browser when you attempt to
access this screen.

If you must use Webfacing, then roll out the Webfaced screens at the
same time as the new 5250 screens. Note that webfacing is a HTML
screen-scraping technology. If you don't have a functional RPG
(Cobol, ect) program and a DDS defined display file, then webfacing is
useless.

If you don't start messing too much with generated code, basic
webfacing conversion is very fast. Once the product is configured and
staff is trained, it is possible to convert literally dozens of screen
an hour.

There are other products that claim "on the fly" conversion. Maybe you
should look into these.

Note that whatever product you use, there is a twenty year gap between
5250 and HTML technologies. 5250 screens generally do not map very
well to web pages. The results are often awkward or confusing to both
5250 and web users.

regards,

marty

Post by Didjit
Question. My shop is in the process of rewriting one of our main apps.
Unfortunately, we are doing this in phases, so we cannot just rip the app
up all at once.
Question, is it possible to Webface only certain screens
and if the screen has not been webfaced, then fall back into 5250? We want
this to be seamless to the users, IE one client. I know 5250 can be
streamed to a browser, so I'm guessing Websphere would need to be
configured to know what to serve up to the user (webfaced screen, or 5250
screen). Is this possible?
Thanks
Chris

[J Connor]

Chris,

We ran into a somewhat similar problem in which we could not find a
definite answer through webfacing so we elected to use Visual RPG. We
have a national client so the amount of screens that must be changed
is enormous so we have no alternative but to change them in sections.
VRPG allowed us to change the screens we wanted and also lets us
utilize the existing 5250 screens. Just if you want another choice.

----
For AS400 questions and answers, try www.as400support.com

Post by Didjit
Question. My shop is in the process of rewriting one of our main apps.
Unfortunately, we are doing this in phases, so we cannot just rip the app
up all at once.
Question, is it possible to Webface only certain screens
and if the screen has not been webfaced, then fall back into 5250? We want
this to be seamless to the users, IE one client. I know 5250 can be
streamed to a browser, so I'm guessing Websphere would need to be
configured to know what to serve up to the user (webfaced screen, or 5250
screen). Is this possible?
Thanks
Chris