Alex,
We are using IBM Visual Age for Java Enterprise Edition (Enterprise
Edition being key!) - and that has the Visual Servlet Builder which allows
you to build a Servlet that renders HTML and connects to CICS
transactions/programs through their supplied packages com.ibm.ctg.client
(CICS Connector a.k.a. CICS Transaction Gateway includes things like eating
COBOL commareas and spitting out Java classes) and com.ibm.ivj.servlet
(Visual Servlet extended from httpServlet). Between those two packages,
although it is somewhat cumbersome for the first time to create your HTML
rendering servlet in the visual composition editor the resulting product is
quite Java and quite elegant. Furthermore the IDE (IBM VAJ EE) comes with
some pretty good .pdf doumentation on the Servlet Builder and the Visual
Composition Editor & IBM has some great classes on Java.
-Erik
P.S. IBM also has some transitional/migrational approaches targeted to
customers who may not be ready or able to get to the latest releases of
OS/390, CICS, etc like screen scraping and generic front-ending of 3270
based apps with HTML like the "CICS 3270 Bridge", etc. Bob Yelavich
(ex-IBM'er who continues to give a lot of great CICS seminars for IBM) is
currently giving a "roadshow" which discusses the various ways to get to
CICS from the internet and idenitifies each and the specific requirements
and limiting versions of MVS, OS/390, CICS etc - see http://www.yelavich.com
. Bob also has some really cool CICS anniversary shirts for us
TRUE..."computer professionals"!
-----Original Message-----
From: Alex P Deller [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, April 01, 1999 11:55 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: New to Servlets (and JAVA) and this list...
What third-party JAVA toolkit are you using to connect to CICS? And what
version of 0S390, CICS, and DB2 are you using? I ask since I am also trying
to do much the same with our legacy stuff and VSAM files
-Alex
>>> "Schmidt, Allen J." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 03/30 7:21 AM >>>
I have just started using JAVA and have decided on the servlet approach for
several reasons. I am developing servlets to put a new face on our existing
CICS mainframe transactions with the help a third-party JAVA toolkit. So far
so good. I finally got interaction between the html forms and the mainframe
transactions.
Session management and servlet life span will be some of the big issues I
can see so far. I guess I have not worked with it enough to know how to
handle the situations yet. When a user enters form parameters and submits
the page, the servlet runs, connects to the mainframe, starts the CICS
transaction, fills in the fields and returns the results. But what happens
then? Is the servlet still running "somewhere"? For how long? What if I want
to pass more info to the next CICS screen that appears? Or move from CICS
screen to screen getting data from the html form and proceeding to the next
html page? I need to make sure another user running the same transaction
doesn't "jump in" and the screens get mixed up.
Also, is there a way to pass parameters to the servlets without them
appearing on the URL address line? I can get this to happen with a CGI type
of program I am using to access and update ODBC databases so I know the
process is generally possible but not sure about servlets.
I hope these questions are appropriate for this forum. Please let me know if
not.
Thank you
Allen Schmidt
Northern VA Community College
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
___________________________________________________________________________
To unsubscribe, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and include in the body
of the message "signoff SERVLET-INTEREST".
Archives: http://archives.java.sun.com/archives/servlet-interest.html
Resources: http://java.sun.com/products/servlet/external-resources.html
LISTSERV Help: http://www.lsoft.com/manuals/user/user.html
___________________________________________________________________________
To unsubscribe, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and include in the body
of the message "signoff SERVLET-INTEREST".
Archives: http://archives.java.sun.com/archives/servlet-interest.html
Resources: http://java.sun.com/products/servlet/external-resources.html
LISTSERV Help: http://www.lsoft.com/manuals/user/user.html
___________________________________________________________________________
To unsubscribe, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and include in the body
of the message "signoff SERVLET-INTEREST".
Archives: http://archives.java.sun.com/archives/servlet-interest.html
Resources: http://java.sun.com/products/servlet/external-resources.html
LISTSERV Help: http://www.lsoft.com/manuals/user/user.html
