RE: webfacing and competing products

[Martin Rowe <martin@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tuesday 17 June 2003 18:04, Joe Pluta wrote:
> > From: Don McIntyre
> >
> > Joe & others,
> > How do you handle, or suggest to handle the UI for non-dds based
> > applications (i.e.  os/400 menus, WRKSPLF, WRKSYSSTS...etc)?
>
> You need to balance the real business need with the how much work you
> are willing to do.  How many users actually need WRKSYSSTS?  Remember,
> a zero CPW machine still supports a single interactive display for
> operator access. But if you really need some functions, you can roll
> your own using APIs. I'm currently working on partial replacements for
> some functions, such as WRKSPLF, using the APIs.  They're unlikely to
> be as fully featured as IBM's commands, but in general they work fine. 
> And they'll be open source, so you can use them as you please.  In
> fact, there used to be an open source version of WRKSPLF available. 
> And Brad Stone's got a WRKSPLF replacement, though it's not free, I
> don't think, and I don't know that he supplies source.

Hi Joe

My WRKUSROUTQ contains most of WRKSPLF/WRKOUTQ functionality using APIs 
etc. It's free and open source so could be added to easily enough, as I 
think it might need in that situation. For instance you get prompted for 
IBM commands for a 2=CHGSPLFA 

Another thing is viewing a spool file. I have an option 5 aka DSPSPLF and 
my own that reformats the report to show line spacing etc, but that 
currently uses DSPPFM behind the scenes. Easy enough to rectify, but it 
only works for *SCS reports. I like your idea of converting to pdf for 
viewing. In fact our in-house version of WRKUSROUTQ links to 
CoolSpools/400 for converting our AFPDS reports to pdf for more easy 
viewing.

> And of course, if you need heavy access to certain features, OpsNav
> does alot of it for you.

Assuming you're running on Windows, that is. Then again WebFacing only 
works in IE...

> OS/400 menus can be replaced with DDS menus pretty quickly.  If you use
> command prompting rather than actual DDS, you're in a more difficult
> position.

Quite. I presume even third party or in-house commands would have the same 
problem.  Converting commands to CL/DDS does seem a bit clumsy :(

Regards, Martin
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