Hi All, Pharmacy, ifcap, registration and nursing modules are console based modules that reside on the server. We are using these modules by connecting to the server via a Putty session.
I wanted to discuss a few options for migrating from console modules to GUI's on client machines 1- Make a reasonable GUI front end in any technology e.g. VB, VC++, C#, Java for the respective console module. Once data is entered within the user friendly GUI on the clinet side, a telnet session is instantiated programmatically (within the client application) to connect to the server, and the corresponding mumps routine/console module is started on the server, and inputs are passed into the telnet session programmatically as the server based console module prompts for inputs. For the vista server, it would exactly be like a user is interactively calling module/routines and responding to the input prompts from a telnet session. For such an approach the input output logic/flow of the corresponding vista console module must be very well defined and static, So that it can be "sort of" hard coded into the client telnet session. 2- Using a screen scrapping utility to generate web services. Screen scrapping utilities record the user interaction flow of a console module and generate web services. Client applications (GUI's) can be built that collect data from user and send the input data by consuming the web services. the screen scrapping utility will then send the input data respectively to the console module on the server. This approach is more or less the same as the first one. In the first case, the client application programattically opens up a telnet session to access the console module on the server. Whereas in this case, a utility does that for us. Such screen scrapping utilities are available for purchase. The above two approaches require less development effort but are rigid as a kind of "hard coding" is involved. Any unexpected flow or sequence in the console modules will break the whole process. 3. Reading through the routines of the console modules and making them silent instead of interactive. i.e. Right now when a mumps routine (that belongs to a console module) is invoked on the server, the routine prompts for user inputs and the input has to be provided on the console to move ahead. A silent routine would be the one which takes all the inputs as parameters or from a pre-stored place. so that the routine can be invoked with the input parameters and it doesnt prompt for input during the execution. Such silent routines can then be mapped to RPCs. These RPC's can then be accessed from a client end GUI application. This approach seems the most suitable to me but it requires considerable amount of effort. MUMPS exeprtise would be required as routine have to be modified or in some cases re-written. Has anybody tried any of the above techniques or any other technique for that matter to make GUI's for console modules? I have a few questions regarding M2Web as i have been reading about the web based registration module using M2Web. Does M2Web bypass fileman/vista and directly make entries into the mumps database? If this is so, doesnt it mean M2Web is bypassing Vista's business logic and creating web based modules using M2Web would require knowing which files to make entries into? please comment. Regards, Imran __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ------------------------------------------------------- Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security? Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job easier Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache Geronimo http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=120709&bid=263057&dat=121642 _______________________________________________ Hardhats-members mailing list Hardhats-members@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members
