RE: Web enablement options (previously private)

["Joe Pluta" <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: jkrueger@andrewscg.com
>
> So you're suggesting that a product built in 1997-1999 was based
> on a book you
> published in October, 2000?  My comments were extracted from a
> paper I published
> in September, 2000...

Prior to very late in 2000 the Jacada solutions for the iSeries were the
Jacada for Java and Jacada for HTML screen scraper products.  I worked with
a company attempting to implement both.  The date of your paper is
interesting, since the message-based Innovator product (now renamed to DDS
Bridge) was not announced until late 2000, and the first successful
implementation wasn't announced until the end of November!  Just two weeks
before that, in mid-November of 2000, Jacada announced the "First Integrated
E-Business Solution for Enabling Both Java and HTML Graphical Thin-Clients
for Legacy Applications".  However, it wasn't Innovator, the product they
had "been developing since 1997".  It was the Jacada for Java and Jacada for
HTML screen scraping solution.

As to the availability of my architecture, the original concepts were
published in Midrange Computing magazine and freely available on the
Internet in early 1999, and I actually had discussions with both Jacada and
Seagull about possible collaboration.  Neither showed any interest in my
"radical" approach.


> Your ideas are good, Joe, but I'm not sure they are quite as unique as you
> think, or that they are all part of a private architecture that
> you personally invented!

Actually, they were entirely unique when I first published the design in May
of 1999.  To date, I am the the only person who has published articles and a
book on the subject and I was the only one lecturing on the concept in early
2000.  There is certainly such a thing as convergent evolution, and the
Jacada product is an interesting combination of my design for the automatic
modification of the host program to remove screen I/O with Jacada's
bread-and-butter communication engine.  They've done a fine job so far with
that rather unique approach.  Some day they may even match PSC400 for
functionality and ease of use.  I have doubts, though, since at about $5000
a seat for the "development kit", I suspect they don't WANT a simple
green-screen conversion command.  My "development kit" is simply any HTML
editor.  Or even a simple text editor.  Personally, I use NoteTab Pro.  I
think it's about twenty bucks a seat, if you register it (which I highly
recommend - keep those small software publishers in business <grin>!).

Joe Pluta
www.plutabrothers.com