Shmuel, Pat rather anticipated what I was planning to say here - but I'll express it slightly differently.
Most people have a "pain" threshold when it comes to doing anything which can be mapped to a degree of difficulty. At the time I tried to implement automation for the purposes of teaching it, basically the 80s, the idea of implementing automation by programmed analysis of 3270 data streams in order to extract key character strings constituted a degree of difficulty which reasonable people equated with impossible. Thus I stick by my "requires" and you have the answer to "what gave me this idea". Today, the situation may not be a lot different even if some tools are available to help with what I understand is called "screen scraping". Pat explained that indeed NetView does it, something that's happened since my time playing with NetView and, since I can still scan the manuals, I'll have to dig it out to see just how easy it might be. My first contact with automation in some sort of practice was in 1981 and was a package set up as an example of what NCCF R2 - I think - could do with VTAM commands in a number of start-up and failure situations. Because there was no way to trap messages, the Clists wrote out instructions for the operator telling him/her what to do if certain messages appeared. This cried out for being able to trap messages and enter commands based on analysis of solicited and, most importantly, unsolicited messages. This is clearly a line-by-line environment and establishes the principle that this is the environment which is *required* for automation. I dare say "screen-scrapers" create intermediate messages which could be characterised as line-by-line in order to be integrated into a suitable programming environment such as REXX Clists. Subsequently, teaching automation based on NCCF-NetView, I looked out for the possibility to access whatever programming absorbed commands and spewed out messages by whether or not those commands and messages could be issued from and received by NCCF-NetView in line-by-line mode for integration into Clists. The last time I presented the topic was in 1991 and I see I had managed to list all the following as being, as it were, "enabled for automation" by virtue of allowing line-by-line access to the Command Facility of NetView: VTAM, the host system (MVS, VM and VSE), host-based subsystems (IMS, CICS), distributed systems (4700, 8100, AS/400, etc.), non-SNA systems using, for example, NetView/PC, LAN Manager or Programmable Network Access. However, I had a particular automation problem to solve with my PC. When I got connected using ADSL, my ISP for reasons best know to the ISP, broke the connection to my little black box every 36 hours. In order quickly to re-establish the connection I created a sort of Clist using a free package* for automating Windows. Clearly this Clist operates in a "full-screen" or, to be more precise, a "window" environment. I recall having to learn how to move around the window using "tab" keys rather than the mouse**. In order to be able to say a bit more about it, I took a look at the code and I really can't, it's gobbledygook - which kind-of supports my point. It's not worth relearning for any purpose because (1) my ISP stopped this stupidity long ago, (2) the author of the free package has come up with a whole new way of doing it which, one of these days, I'll have a look at. * AutoIt - http://www.hiddensoft.com/ ** Perhaps a skill that folk who are too ham-fisted to manage the laptop mouse facilities - folk like myself that is - may find useful to acquire. Chris Mason ----- Original Message ----- From: "Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main To: <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, 02 February, 2006 12:38 PM Subject: Re: Access to Mainframes via Putty? > In <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, on 02/01/2006 > at 07:47 AM, Chris Mason <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: > > >access but automation requires line-by-line access. > > What gives you that idea? > > -- > Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT > ISO position; see <http://patriot.net/~shmuel/resume/brief.html> > We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress. > (S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
