I'm sure many of you are familiar with the IBM i5 series emulator (looks like this poop)
My company uses this religiously and there is no Biz logic in it so anytime somone in our finance dpt makes a human error it accepts it and adds it to the database. Not to mention its ugly, hard to use, not intuitive, etc....
I would like to create a frontend for this interface so that we can control the logic before its submitted to the system (we dont control the system itself) so in effect I need to make my own emulator app.
However I cant seem to find any information on how to interface with the i series, namely login, send commands, and view or gather data from the screens it would normally send back.
Any suggestions?
The problem is not the iSeries but the software package your company is running on it.
There ARE advantages to use green screens: it's fast and it's almost unbeatable at data entry, provided you get used to it.
But to answer your question, the iSeries is a J2EE enabled machine: a HTTP server comes installed and depending of the version of the iSeries, WebSphere might be already installed, or are entitled to install it. Then you can use JT400, which is the java toolkit for the os400 containing the jdbc drivers to connect the database and the necessary classes for calling programs.
If you prefer php, there is a flavor of the Zend framework made to work on the iSeries but I never tried it.
I'd recommend that you take a look at both the Attachmate Verastream Host Integrator (VHI) and IBM's Host Access Transformation Services (HATS) products. They effectively just screen scrape the green screen terminals to allow you to pull and push data and provide macro recording and editing tools to automate the process. App integration can be achieved via web services or html/jsp/servlet programming (plus .Net for VHI and EJB's for HATS). They do come with enterprise pricing however which may be an obstacle for some. They do have free trial offerings for evaluation purposes to help determine if they are an appropriate solution to your problem.
What software packages are they using? Most programs that I use in the 5250 emulator has some business logic that error checks the data before adding it to the database. Can you get us some more information so we can direct you in a better direction.
There are vendors that sell products that screen-scrape the 5250 data stream and produces a web front-end. Or you can write your own front-end in the language of your choice and just do SQL calls to the database.
THere's got to be some source code. Start by looking at the menu and menu option your users are accessing and figure that's running behind them.
Use command STRPDM to look for source code - look in different libraries (they are like folders)
You might have source code in a "member" called something like xxxMNUSRC xxxRPGSRC (rpg program source) or xxxCLSRC (cl programs), xxxDDSSRC (display/screen source, physical/logical file source)
Objects a "compiled" objects such as files (tables), screens, priter files (reports)
Stay away from Qxxx and #xxx libraries - those are system libraries.
http://systeminetwork.com/ is a good resource for iSeries related questions.
Related
I am new in Multiplayer Game Development, I have already developed a offline game and now I want to make it a multiplayer, so with help of my friend we create a server side script in node.js, but I don't know how to integrate this in my c++ project,
I've googled but, can't find anything helpful.
anybody can suggest any tutorial.
Thanks
You've asked a big open-ended question. As Allern suggests there are a lot of things that you can do with networked programs that can extend it well beyond that of a single user game. For instance in my current game there is an access to a version welcome page in html. There are file downloads for campaign/user maps and there are connections to Firebase for leaderboards and other networked resources like ads.
However, I suspect you are referring to the communications between a number of separate user machines all synchronized to keep them coordinated. For this you will need to write some serialization code to transmit to and receive packets from the central server. Typically a serialization package like flatbuffers will be needed to move information from your data structures to a packet and the reverse.
You might also require communication/network software to asynchronously send and receive those packets (this may be included in whatever game engine you might be using). Boost.asio might help otherwise. There are numerous other networking packages and libraries all the way down to the bare-bones unix/POSIX calls (or Windows OS calls).
You will also need software on the server side to log users in, deal with players disconnecting and doing the main work of passing the game packets around. This software may also implement the logic of your game (game rules) and might do saves on the data if you want users to be able to play the game in multiple sessions (like a big dungeon crawl). There might be packages out there that do most of the server side stuff. If so, please post what you find out.
Cocos2dx does have some networking software built in but it isn't very functional as far as I'm concerned. It does have facilities to display web pages and download files fairly easy but the async communication seems a little weak. You can try the Network module in the API Docs which may have what you are looking for.
Since the type of game and how you want to implement your player interaction will dictate how the software is to be built I'm afraid this answer is a little vague. Good luck. Share your insights.
you can use public tools , as a sample is websocket,it can support C++ and javasc
A few years back, we had a programmer create a type of calculator for use in the audio industry. It was created/compiled in C - and is an .exe we offer for free download. once a user downloads it, they can run it locally.
Our goal is to move that application/calculator to the "cloud" where any user can hypothetically visit a URL, and the calculator is there, running, and ready for user interaction by multiple users.
Is what I describe possible?
Will I need Azure?
What exactly in Azure will I need (i.e. which products/resources)?
Do I need to use the compiled/decompiled version?
Will we need to change any code in the .exe to make this work?
What do I not know that I should know?
I sincerely appreciate any and all input from those that are probably reading this and fully understanding the simplicity of it while I struggle to wrap my head around it.
Thank you!
#Alex, Thank you so much for the response. I apologize I was late getting back to you - have 4 kiddos home - I am actually not sure how to answer that fully. Here is a link to the freely downloadable file we offer to anyone and everyone - it does require an email, but that is just for notifications when the version is updated. https://caf.prosoundtraining.com/verify/ and here is the home page of the site: https://caf.prosoundtraining.com - It works by the user downloading the program (which is what we would like to move to the cloud), and then inputing various values for determining what watt amplifier to use based on speaker selection, length of cables, distance of audience from speakers, etc. basically several calculation tools like that, and then the main program that allows users to visualize amplifier performance via running signal tests through the amplifier. Once a user downloads the program, the calculators (which are separate in the decompiled version I have), they can choose to just use the calculators, or the complete program.
Is what I describe possible?
Well, If you are talking about a pure command-line application: yes.
But, If you are talking about a GUI application: If your application not fully usable from the command line, Go back to the source code and strip down all windows, buttons, UI stuff, etc.. AND make it usable from the command line.
Will I need Azure?
Any cloud provider will do just fine. Depending on the traffic, an old laptop with an internet connection might be enough for your case.
What exactly in Azure will I need (i.e. which products/resources)?
Azure virtual machine with a publicly accessible IP.
Do I need to use the compiled/decompiled version?
Will we need to change any code in the .exe to make this work?
What do I not know that I should know?
Using decompiled version (Source code):
WebAssembly
WebAssembly is a new type of code that can be run in modern web browsers — it is a low-level assembly-like language with a compact binary format that runs with near-native performance and provides languages such as C/C++, C# and Rust with a compilation target so that they can run on the web. It is also designed to run alongside JavaScript, allowing both to work together.
Emscripten
Compile C and C++ code, or any other language that uses LLVM, into WebAssembly, and run it on the Web, Node.js, or other wasm runtimes.
Using compiled verison (executable):
Common Gateway Interface-ish approach
Common Gateway Interface (CGI) is an interface specification for web servers to execute programs like console applications (also called command-line interface programs) running on a server that generates web pages dynamically. Such programs are known as CGI scripts or simply as CGIs. The specifics of how the script is executed by the server are determined by the server. In the common case, a CGI script executes at the time a request is made and generates HTML.
My suggestion would be to use python, PHP or any scripting language you are familiar with to spin up a webserver and execute command based on incoming requests.
Python example:
import subprocess
from flask import Flask
app = Flask(__name__)
#app.route('/calculator') # Accessible from http://[ipaddress]:[port]/calculator
def hello_RedPanda():
command = "..." # as if you are running your program from cmd.
result = subprocess.check_output(command) # execute given command
return result # to your web browser
Once you are done with all the back-end pluming, you can add your buttons and tabs back by rebuilding your UI on the client-side using HTML, CSS and Javascript.
Building the UI in client-side is actually the easy part. The really tricky part in your case is (as I mentioned above) making your application usable from the command line.
See more:
WebAssembly
Emscripten
CGI
A case similar to yours
I've been asked to figure out a way to do this, so please fill me in on whether this is even possible or if it shouldn't be done.
The goal is to automate data entry into VMS (we use E-Term32 for connecting to VMS). Things that have been discussed for this purpose: Excel spreadsheets, Dynamic Data Exchange, the macro tools available in E-Term32 (Emulation Command Language - ECL), OLE Automation, etc.
The envisioned process would go like:
Receive Excel file (or other data format like a text file)
Connect to VMS
Run Macro
Macro navigates the menu system and uses data from Excel file to enter data
I know there are "better" or easier ways to do this like building an application to enter the data, but my supervisors are concerned about circumventing the business logic built into the "Blue Screen" menu/applications. They are also sticklers on building new applications for stuff like this anyways.
How is the data stored on OpenVMS, may we assume in native RMS (indexed) files? or some database (RDB, Oracle, Adabas,...) ?
Whichever, it is sure to be perfectly possible to write directly in the datastore through some ODBC or JDBC method. Freeware, or commercial (ConnX, Attunity,...). Just google: OpenVMS ODBC
Once you find a method for direct data access one should indeed be concerned about the business logic. Field formatting, values ranges, foreign keys,...
Thus access can only be granted to (software managed by) trusted team players.
But that can be perfectly manageable and you may find the new method can be made more robust than those green-screen apps.
If direct data access is no negotiable, then there are still many options.
Screen-scrapers have been build, you should not attempt to write from scratch.
Check out commercial terminal-centric modernization tools like: http://www.rocketsoftware.com/products/rocket-legasuite-gui
presentation: http://de.openvms.org/Spring2009/03-Dutch_Police_FINAL.pdf
(I am not associated with the fine folks # Rocket, it is just one example I am aware of. There are surely more (commercial) options.
Now about those business rules. How clean is this implement?
Strict form/function seperation? Probably not, otherwise you would not be asking.
There are several RPC, GSOAP, methods available, free and for fee, that allow one to call OpenVMS service routines, passing in external data. That's probably the best path forward.
The company I work for, Attunity, sells such 'legacy adapter' tools in addition to ODBC/JDBC data access to files directly.
For example, using Attunity Connect software you can connect a row in a table, to the call of a subroutine. The basic plan would be to just use an SQL INSERT statement on Linux or Windows to an ODBC datasource which is connected to an OpenVMS target. The connect software will then call an OpenVMS subroutine in a shareable library to process the row, using or at least re-using the existing business logic for validation, normalization or de-normalization as the case might be. And yes, they can also expose a SELECT or MODIFY for lookups that are more complex than can be described in SQL.
Everybody happy! You can use modern tools, they can use the old code and checks.
And ofcourse another time-honored method is to just have an FTP drop point for data to be entered. Some OpenVMS job scans an agreed upon directory for 'action' files, and runs an OpenVMS program to process the data in the fashion similar to the terminal UI app. Cobol, Basic, re-using as much of the existing terminal code and logic as possible
Good luck!
Hein
I work in a corporate office environment which routinely uses an IBM Mainframe and AS\400 as the main source of the Information System.
However, the company is growing faster than the information technology group can support.
Therefore, it is necessary to create ancillary applications to accommodate the ever changing business needs and new ventures.
I’ve introduced a web based application using PHP and MySql database (as we have routinely received bulk Mainframe downloads and imported into Microsoft Access Databases before upsizing the databases to a SQL server due to their ever increasing size).
It was been mandated that all new application be similar to look and functionality as the Mainframe. It must be a text based user interface where it’s not necessary to use the mouse, only function keys to navigate menus and pressing the enter key to add new data (records) or to execute a search.
What modern day programming language will satisfy this Text-based user interface mandate? Preferably something that can interact with MySql to fetch/store data and look similar to the mainframe and possibly support XML formatting (font colors, input fields, etc).
Thanks in advanced!
You can build this in pretty much any language. Almost all programming languages have support for these things. Choose a modern language that your development team already knows well and use that. Ideally, it would be a high level language (don't use C) to speed up development time.
its been a while since i have used it but ncurses might be a good solution
Java, Delphi, Visual Studio, etc, etc, etc. As #Oleksi said; pretty much any modern fat-client GUI language that has a database library that can handle MySQL will do.
If you're not sure which to use, you should either hire someone with experience or try a few small prototypes.
I am looking to create a simple mobile agent system which will deal with 4 tasks, i.e 4 different mobile agents jobs: Database update, meeting scheduling, network services discovery and kernel update.
I have done my research and have seen different frameworks such as Aglet, Jade, agent builder etc. My question is which one should i use? Also i need to setup the base code for it to work, can someone point me to a site or help me to setup the basic functions of the mobile agent?
I've read about tahiti server for the Aglet model. I'm quite confused about how to set up the mobile agent system. Any help would be much appreciated.
I have also tried to it using RMI. I had created a method of type agent, but i couldn't pass it through remote method implementation. I was reading about tcp and udp socket programming. I was thinking may be it would be more fair to do it using socket programming. In this case, would this be called an agent? I was thinking about the server sending datagram packets to multiple clients.
You need to ask yourself why you want to use mobile agents at all. The notion of a mobile agent was popular in the agent research community in the early 90's, but fell out of favour because (i) it wasn't clear what problem it was solving, (ii) the capability to allow arbitrary code to migrate to a particular computer and execute with enough privileges to access local data and services is very open to abuse, and (iii) all of the claimed benefits of mobile agents can actually be achieved though web services (REST or otherwise) and open data formats such as RDF. Consequently, few, if any, mobile agent platforms have been properly maintained since the early experiments.
It also sounds as though you need to be clear which end-user problem you want to solve. Scheduling a meeting and updating my kernel are very different tasks - I'd be very uncomfortable with a program that claims do both. If your interest is in the automation of system maintenance tasks, such as DB tuning and kernel patching, on large networks you might want to look at the SmartFrog project, or read up on autonomic computing.
I use JADE and I agree with the first guy, agent systems usually take alot of overhead to going so if you can avoid it, please do. If however you choose to proceed choose a platform with alot of support and a big user group.
Jade has some neat features like a directory facilitator DF, which works like a yellow pages so other agents don't have to know what agents are running and what services are supplied they can simply inquire by the DF.
Also JADE ContractNetBehaviours help simplify communication.