Stay-Linked 7.1 Solves Common Barcode Scanning Problems

Published: January 24, 2006

by Alex Woodie

A new capability to transfer emulation sessions in the latest release of eBusiness Solution Pros' Stay-Linked will make it easy for warehouse workers to get back up and running following the failure of their primary radio frequency (RF) devices.

With previous releases, workers would have to sign on to a new session if their barcode scanning gun failed, which took time and could mean doing some things over. But with the new Advanced Terminal Session Management (ATSM) capability in Stay-Linked Administrator (the suite's Windows-based management application), administrators can swap the user's previous session to a new device. What's more, the replacement device can be the same type, a different type, or even a legacy device, which can now be used as a spare, eSP says. Stay-Linked provides 5250, 3270, and Unix emulation on a variety of RF devices, including those made by Symbol, Intermec, AML, PSC, HHP, LXE, and others.

The new ATSM capability is a direct result of the way that eSP built Stay-Linked to run sessions on the host (most often an iSeries), instead of the device itself, which the company calls its Client2Host architecture. "If possible at all, [the new features] would have been extremely difficult and inherently inefficient to implement if we had adopted the typical device-side emulation strategy," says Mike Pagani, eSP's vice president of sales and marketing.

Other new features delivered with this release include support for multiple levels of automated failover to backup Telnet/SSH hosts. If the user cannot connect to the primary target Telnet/SSH host system, Stay-Linked will automatically try to connect them to the first, and then subsequently, configured backup hosts, the company says.

eSP has also enhanced the Stay-Linked API to provide better control over the scanner laser on RF devices, and to correct a "a very common and costly problem" in automatic data capture (ADC) inventory applications. "Typically, end users do not see that a prior scan yielded an error within the inventory application and scans the next item anyway," the company says. "This new Stay-Linked API functionality can be used to interrupt a user's scanning flow by disabling the scanner when a specific error condition occurs (e.g., invalid item), forcing the user to hit a specific key to acknowledge the error and re-enable the laser prior to moving on to scanning the next item."

The final major new feature in Stay-Linked 7.1 is support for Secure Shell (SSH) emulation, which enables users to completely eliminate Telnet from their emulation environment. Stay-Linked says customers' concerns about the security implications and complying with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act were primary drivers in offering SSH as an emulation option in Stay-Linked. The company announced SSH support earlier this month, and it is now generally available with Stay-Linked 7.1.

Stay-Linked 7.1 will be available as a free upgrade to existing customers starting January 31. For more information, see www.stay-linked.com.