InformationWeek

August 18, 1997

Tool Links Legacy And Client -Server

IBI's RAD tool scales down from mainframe

hat most people call a mainframe, Clayton Wiseman calls a server. Wiseman, a developer with the Houston Chronicle, works for the kind of mainframe shop Information Builders Inc. is targeting with a new development tool release that fuses legacy, client-server, and Web systems.

IBI's product, Cactus 3.0, adds server- and client-side support for Java, JavaScript, VBScript, and database persistence to the fourth-generation-language rapid application development (RAD) environment. This is good news for IT shops like the Chronicle's, where mainframes will continue to be the main focus of enterprise data management.

The newspaper is using the pre- release version of Cactus to modernize text-based "green-screen" systems with desktop and Web graphical user interfaces. It's also using Cactus to build systems that scale across mainframes, Unix and Windows NT servers, and clients.

For this kind of work, the product's new Web scripting support is key. "I'm not a Java programmer; I'm a green-screen programmer," Wiseman says. "But I took to this. We have JavaScripts running on the Cactus browser client, for field validation and for values, capitalization, and so on. This makes the app run faster, because it doesn't have to go back to the server for validation."

According to analysts, what separates IBI's Cactus from other high-end distributed RAD systems, such as those from Forté Software Inc. and Prolifics, is the product's mainframe focus and its leveraging of IBI's EDA middleware, which links Cactus to 70 database types on 35 platforms. "IBI is scaling down from the mainframe, where [Forté and Prolifics] are scaling up," says Mike Kenn edy, an analyst with the Meta Group in Stamford, Conn.

IBI's middleware also supports TCP/IP, LU2, LU6.2, and other communications protocols. CICS, MVS, and IMS transactions can be invoked by Cactus through EDA, enabling integration of new Web-based transaction systems with existing mainframe and host-based applications.

The Cactus Workbench developer's tool is priced at $3,250 per seat, with no run-time charges. Pricing for Cactus Server, which is required, starts at $5,500.

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