InformationWeek.com

Welcome Guest. | Log In| Register | Membership Benefits

July 20, 1998

Mainframe Data Online

Companies have numerous ways to access legacy data for Internet apps

By Noah Shachtman

he Internet and the mainframe seem like polar opposites on the IT spectrum. But many IT shops are scrambling to deploy Internet applications that exploit the 70% of business data--from financial information to customer lists, personnel records to manufacturing reports--that resides on mainframes.

There are several ways to access and use that data. One is to use a Web browser as a front end to a mainframe application. Also, Web application servers running sophisticated middleware can broker mainframe data to end users. One of the most recent and most compelling ways to exploit mainframe data on the Web is to employ the mainframe itself as a Web server.

Using a Web browser as a front end involves giving a graphic interface to an application that a mainframe user would have previously seen on his or her terminal's "green screen." Terminal emulation products for the Web include Attachmate's Host View Server, Wall Data's Cyberprise Host, and WRQ's EnterView. Some of these programs work by sending HTML versions of the green screens to the browser. Others download a Java applet to the end user, providing access to mainframe applications.

"Step one to any legacy data integration is to get the thing in the browser," says York Bauer, VP of distribution and partner development for Wall Data. "By using existing enterprise applications as a starting point, we can get customers on the Web in an evolutionary, not revolutionary, way."

In addition to giving the applications a graphical interface, the more advanced of these types of programs--Computer Associates' Opal, for example--combine various green screens into a single Web page. Mike Zucker, assistant director of application development at the University of Miami in Florida, used Opal to offer student information over the Web. Culling the school's IBM ES/9000 mainframe-based CA-IDMS database, in use since the early '80s, the Web-enabled student system, called Easy, allows for online grade checking, class registration, and student record access. About 8,000 students use the system, which took six months and less than $50,000 to complete.

"Opal gives Easy a more attractive version of green-screen data," Zucker says. "It gets rid of the cryptic mainframe pathways, replacing them with links. And it integrates a few systems into a single view."

Robert Lincoln, CA product manager for Opal, says the technology, which sits on top of existing applications, advances the mainframe application without having to significantly alter it. "It uses the existing business logic of applications," he adds.

But for some users, that's the problem. Because these programs use the mainframe application's business logic, the green-screen paradigm prevails--despite the modern, graphical look. As a result, explains Bill Santos, VP of MR&S LLC, a Manalapan, N.J., hardware integrator, "as soon as a single screen changes, you have to revamp."

Web application servers are another way users access mainframe data. Application servers provide a single point to manage multiple programs running on a variety of platforms, including mainframes. Vendors such as Net Dynamics, Netscape, and Oracle offer application servers.

Middleware is often used with application servers to speak to various mainframe platforms. Middleware takes the protocols used by the Web server, such as CGI, and translates them into the ones used by mainframes, such as CICS, MQ, and SNA. Products in this category include Insession Inc.'s TransFuse and Intelligent Environment's Screensurfer.

"We provide a heterogeneous solution for the Web to talk to any messaging systems or transaction processing monitoring products," says Mark Phillips, chief technology officer at Insession. "The Web application doesn't need to understand the idiosyncrasies on the back end."