WebCurses

An innovation in the online side of business has just arrived. Web enabling your existing application will give your company the edge you need to further your business, and in many cases stay in business. Take advantage of an easy-to-use framework. In a short time you can enhance your product and/or internal system with a thin client/web enabled GUI.

Existing applications that use CSentar, ScreenIO, and other 'text' based interfaces, can now be automatically web enabled. As a second stage: integrated help, enhanced function buttons, and other nice features can be added either per screen or to groups of screens.

We have experience with enabling other types of 'text' interfaces. From enabling with a thin client, to replacing with 'true GUIs' across a WAN using a variety of back-end languages. The communications and management framework can also be used alone with your existing GUI.

GO TO PAST PROBLEMS LIKE:

• Having a fixed size screen.
  • WebCurses' dynamic sized "screens" allow your developers or staff to extend beyond what is currently in the application, also allowing more detail to be seen.
• Having to 'rewrite' to web or thin client enable.
  • WebCurses offers additional GUI detail and extensions beyond a simple 'text' ssh/telnet login.
• Complex Setup.
  • WebCurses allows immediate web access without complex setup
  • WebCurses runs in any java-enabled web browser. WebCurses allows you to work from any type of computer that supports JAVA, even a cell phone would be possible.
    • No need to install terminal emulators on each desktop.
    • No need to put up a fight if you have the right emulation and setup of the emulator to 'make the screen look right'.
    • No need to set up 'that new terminal type we just got' on the server.

• Your application using WebCurses gains security by isolating the business logic to inhouse servers and only the GUI processing is ran on a user's desktop.
• WebCurses allows the utilization of an encrpyted SSL tunnel.
• WebCurses also supports controlled access to run the application without having to build authentication into the application.
  • Login authentication info is available if desired.
  • Any existing application authentication can be used in place of or in addition to the default security models.
• WebCurses gets rid of system level access as well. WebCurses removes the need to grant each user system level access. A user having a ssh login running 'just a shellscript' could be broken, a WebCurses user doesn't need shell level login access.
• WebCurses allows different server types to be used with 'any' type of client.
  • The WebCurses client can be placed as a link on a web page or run 'directly' if needed.

Data parsing tools

We also have available a command line tool (thus it can be used in scripts) to parse COBOL data. You give the parser a COBOL copybook which describes the data layout, and then feed it any COBOL data from a mainframe, UNIX system, PC, etc. The parser can break apart the data, convert EBCDIC/ASCII, filter by value, output just specific fields, etc. This C based tool has been used on warehousing projects, data conversion, Y2K validation, remote access and other projects with different customers. This tool was developed at Achievement Focused Technology, Inc. www.aftinc.net

We also have a Java/XML based product which performs the same function. Rather than a COBOL copybook, you give the parser an XML data structure which describes the data layout and can also custom classes/methods based on specific data conditions.