In <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
on 06/01/2007
at 12:28 PM, "McKown, John" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
>But what about TSO?
TSO has always been able to run with line-mode terminals. I don't know
whether there is an equivalent to NTO on a platform still in
production, but you can still use Telnet for an LU1 session.
>TSO? Does anybody think that TSO might be some how "extended"
>so that it can "natively" talk to something like a Web browser?
I'd ask rather whether that is desirable; there are obvious
disadvantages to that approach.
>Or is such a thing even necessary?
I don't believe so.
>What about the possibility of "decoupling" ISPF from TSO 3270 entirely?
>From TSO? Why? From 3270? Yes, with the WSA GUI; you'd have to give
IBM a business case to reactivate work on it.
>It might be interesting to be able to run ISPF applications from a UNIX shell.
I'm not sure what you mean by that. Scripting for ISPF? Invoking ISPF
from the OMVS shell in z/OS? The latter was done years ago. Logging on
directly to OMVS and invoking ISPF? That might be more difficult.
Running ISPF itself on an arbitrary UNIX® platform? There are
portability issues.
>WSA is something like this,
That depends on what "this" is.
>but incomplete in that a person can run a "native" TSO program
>(which does not use ISPF services for terminal display) and the
>"line mode" TSO goes to the 3270 session.
The necessary hooks exist to trap the output of line mode TPUT's. It's
a SMOP for ISPF to do so and to route the output to the WSA. What I'd
really like to see is integration of the TSO Session Manager with the
ISPF support for the WSA GUI, plus support of block copy, cut and
paste in the WSA GUI.
>In addition, WSA requires a specialized client on the workstation.
I don't see that as a bad thing, although there might be a role for a
generic WSA written in, e.g., Java. I'd still want native Linux and
OS/2 clients for performance, although IBM is not likely to enhance
the latter.
>Mighten it be interesting to be able to use the WSA interface via a
>standards-compliant Web browser (that is, I.E. or Firefox or Opera
>or ????)?
I don't know about Opera, but IE is far from standards compliant. In
some ways a web interface has more portability issues than the WSA
approach, and would give worse performance. I'd prefer that IBM offer
it as an option, if at all.
>This would open it up to Linux and Mac users in addition to Windows
>users.
What is "it"? Linux and Mac users already have access to TSO,
including ISPF. I'd see porting WSA and the WSA GUI as a better
investment of IBM's money.
>If the WSA protocol were documented by IBM, I might even take a shot
>at implementing a client in Java
Make a business case and take a swing <g> at convincing IBM through
the appropriate channels.
>(I'm weird - I like Java fairly well.)
De gustibus non disputandem est. Personally, I prefer Ada, PL/I and
REXX, but Java does have the advantage of a portable GUI.
>Has anybody considered running "something" which uses subsystem SVC
>screening to "trap" the TSO terminal I/O SVCs, such as TGET, TPUT,
>and TPG and then converting this to "something else" such as XML or
>HTML to ship to a different client?
I doubt it; there are hooks much more suitable for the task.
>I think that BMC has something like this because they have an
>interface other than IKJEFT01 to run some of their TSO based
>Mainview displays. Or they did in the past.
No, although it might look that way from the outside. A lot of TSO
services rely on the TMP having initialized control blocks. See
Chris's reply for details of what BMC did[1] offer.
[1] And may still, for all I know.
--
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
