Re: [WEB400] Web-Facing and 5250 removal

[Simon Coulter <shc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 10/05/2004, at 4:54 AM, CZE Midrange wrote:

> I have heard that the web-facing procedures effectively run as "batch 
> jobs"
> in the operating system and that IBM sells you only the "governed" CPW
> machines, effectively shutting down most/all of the interactive 
> feature? Is
> this true? What specific effects does this have on typical interactive
> programs that handle data entry or inquiry?

It depends on what you mean by 'batch' jobs and what you mean by 'web 
facing'. Any job that performs 5250 I/O consumes Interactive CPW 
regardless of whether it is a batch or interactive job unless something 
has been done to the job to change that. You can prove this by 
acquiring a display device from a submitted job and see that it uses 
Interactive CPW.

If you mean the IBM Webfacing product then yes, your terminal sessions 
consume Batch CPW **IF** you are on the 800 series hardware or later. 
On earlier hardware they consume Interactive CPW. The only other 
non-intrusive web-enabling product that allows terminal sessions to 
consume Batch CPW is aXes (US distributor is Linoma Software at 
http://www.linomasoftware.com) from Arterial Software.

The intent of both these products is to allow you to run existing 5250 
applications on Standard model (i.e., zero interactive capacity) 
systems.

If you buy a zero interactive system you cannot run a normal 5250 
workload without either using Webfacing, aXes, or one of the intrusive 
converters such as those from Seagull, or Pluta Brothers, etc.

> What about heavy transactional apps like Warehouse 
> Management...through an
> RF device?

Since most of these connect via standard Telnet they require 
Interactive CPW to support the workload.

> If I ran an old fashioned 5250 program and did not send it through the
> "converter", would the job crawl slower than a turtle on valium? What 
> about
> performance in general? Are HTML pages through web browser portals less
> stable than the good old dumb terminal or is there no real difference?

Even on a zero interactive system there is enough Interactive CPW to 
run a very tiny amount of 5250 workload. This is intended for system 
administration and but one very light user is not likely to affect the 
system adversely.

Again, it depends on what you mean by stability but in general web 
applications are just as stable as 5250 applications (allowing for the 
fact that you have probably moved to Windows and Internet Explorer 
which are inherently unstable environments). Considering that most of 
the application is still running at the host (OS/400 therefore very 
stable) the only questionable part is the client.

> What about a simple thing like your sign-on to qinter in the morning? 
> Are
> you visible running out of qinter? Are any jobs running out of qinter 
> if
> they are web-faced?

Just because a job is running in QINTER does not mean it is an 
interactive job. Issue SBMJOB CMD(DLYJOB 10) JOBQ(QINTER) to see what I 
mean. What makes it an interactive job is that a user signed on using a 
signon screen managed by the subsystem. Since non-intrusive 
web-enablers such as IBM Webfacing and aXes use terminal devices the 
user jobs still run in QINTER (or where ever the Workstation Entry 
routes the device). Note: I have some recollection that IBM Webfacing 
uses its own named devices and so may route to a different subsystem 
but as I said previously the subsystem has no effect on the job type. 
Subsystems are just a convenient way of grouping related types of work.

> What about printkeys?

What about them? Their use depends on the application and the 
web-enabling tool but be aware the browser-enabled applications can 
make use of the browser's print facilities.

> How do the "green screens" look appearance wise if you are only 
> converting
> them, not modifying them?

Again, that depends on the product you choose for web enabling. Some 
are fairly ugly until you customise the screens. Others provide 
reasonable effects straight out of the box. Since this is an aesthetic 
factor you should look at examples on the various vendor's web sites 
and trial the most promising ones to see for yourself.

> Anything you can think of would be very helpful to us in making this 
> tough
> decision to convert to a web-sphere operation.

You do not have to convert to Websphere to web-enable your 
applications. That is the direction IBM would like you to take but 
Websphere is a nice idea badly implemented. It is simply too complex 
and resource hungry to bother with for most OS/400 shops. aXes does not 
require Websphere or Java and so runs with much less system overhead 
than the alternatives, it also does not need to read or modify your 
source code like the intrusive tools, nor does it require a conversion 
effort or complex configuration.

**Disclaimer: I have an interest in aXes.

Regards,
Simon Coulter.
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