Ericom Software: Legacy Integration Done Right

J2EE

Most companies have several years' worth of customer data in old screen-based systems and have established business rules, so leaving the business logic in these systems and using a screen scraper to unobtrusively interact with the screens of an application is the cheapest and safest method of integration. That is where PowerTerm Host Publisher shines.

The software also offers excellent extensibility. Since most users are used to Web interfaces, it is easier to convert character-based screens into HTML pages than it is to train users to navigate through green screens.

The product is composed of an SDK, which captures a process and generates code, and a runtime server that manages the created transaction.

Host Publisher is a programmatic solution, generating all the code necessary to bind to the screens of an application. The product captures the legacy text-based processes in Visual Basic or Java, encapsulates them in objects and makes them available to other applications.

Since legacy applications don't have the ability to publish to the Web, Host Publisher takes the legacy processes, converts them into transactions and makes them available to client/server or Web applications.

This version supports code generation and transactions for IBM block mode and automated table parsing. Tabular data can be captured automatically by continuing to scrape a screen as it scrolls down. Host Publisher records data until it finds a cue indicating it reached the last set of records. A screen item or a token from the system can then let a programmer place a conditional statement based on the state of the screen. Tabular data also can have line items changing, so tables can be reformatted in a function in midstream as data is passed into a Web or client/server application.

The new version arrives with a useful code-flowcharting tool that displays all the functions and their relation to each other in a system. A developer can easily determine which functions and variables are connected to and from a particular legacy system. The graphical elements in the flowcharts stay synchronized with the code, but clicking on an element does not take a programmer to the associated code. Ericom said it is considering adding that feature.

Whether the front end is Java or Visual Basic, Host Publisher can reuse the same transactions linked to a legacy system. What's more, a new integration server allows testing all of the code generated by Host Publisher without having to attach code to a presentation layer. That separation allows the product to support multiple languages such as PHP, ASP.Net and JSP at the front end.

As screens are captured and read by Host Publisher, the programmer can designate entry fields with the type of text that is appropriate. Host Publisher has a number of text-synchronization methods including wait for text, wait for system and get screen text. Various cursor activities can also be controlled by the software.

All of the synchronization between the legacy system and front end is done automatically. Without that, the programmer would have the difficult task of tracking all of the I/O and handling the data transfer at the right time.

A screen application is stateful as opposed to a Web application, wherein a user can simply hit a back button on his browser and leave the application. Host Publisher makes operations such as hitting the back button, clicking links or going to other Web sites simple to manage by handling a wrong input from the browser and mapping it to an incomplete state in a legacy system. Error states can be nested and trapped by Host Publisher programmatically. Error conditions can be made quite sophisticated as well.

Host Publisher has a powerful method of deciphering painted characters in a screen and mapping the actual data to variables or functions. Ultimately, the programmer determines the data types that each variable must have.

The Host Publisher engine supports SOAP requests so it provides Web services that can map metadata to the code. The current version requires Internet Information Server and Tomcat Web servers.

CHANNEL PROGRAM SNAPSHOTS
>ERICOM SOFTWARE POWERTERM HOTS PUBLISHER
PRICE: $25,000
MARGIN: 30 percent
DISTRIBUTORS: Direct from vendor
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CHANNEL OVERVIEW: Ericom Software's field-based representatives help partners plan strategy, train customers, design prototype solutions for their customers and participate in joint sales calls. Technical resources, marketing materials and a software configurator are available online. Closter, N.J.-based Ericom provides technical and sales training via WebEx.

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