Re: Integrated Web Services server

["Mike Eovino" <meovino@xxxxxxxxx>]

Nathan,

I think all three ideas (refacing / 5250 bridge / rearchitecture) have
their place.

Refacing is fine as a stop-gap measure.  And in my situation, we do
need stop-gap measures.  We have vast arrays of 5250 programs that are
strung together, called by hitting function keys.  A quick but solid
refacing solution is important to us when we go to modernize one
particular application, then find out that -- oh by the way -- we need
to continue to provide access to 10 other programs that users access
by hitting F keys.  HATS would be a good use for this, but I'm not
thrilled about the performance.  I am currently looking for other
refacing solutions as well.

5250 bridge is a middle ground that I'm looking for.  If we can
somehow wrap the 5250 program up into a callable object for our Java
programmers, that lets us reuse this very valuable business logic and
deliver decent applications quickly.  Then we can work on
rearchitecture without having that influence the time to deliver the
application.  Rearchitecture is the final goal of what we're doing.

Mike E.


On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 5:12 PM, Nathan Andelin <nandelin@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > Mike Eovino wrote:
> > in a perfect world, we would be given ample time to
> > rearchitect our ancient 5250 applications...
>
> Mike,
>
> We seemed to drop your thread over the weekend, but it left me kind of
> curious about your thoughts regarding refacing, vs. adopting some kind
> of Web-services bridge to 5250 applications, vs breaking out business
> logic from your 5250 programs and putting it in callable procedures
> [then adopting some kind of Web services interface].
>
> I listened to Zend's 5250 bridge Webcast, featuring Jon Paris, but it
> left me thinking, okay they have something of a bridge, but is it really
> applicable to web services, or just another refacing idea.  You gave me
> the impression that refacing was not viable by your opinion that HATS
> and Webfacing were flops.
>
> Just curious.
>
> Nathan.
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