aXes Whacks Away at Legacy of Evil (Greenscreens)

Published: September 5, 2006

by Alex Woodie

There's no denying that the OS/400 server (AS/400, iSeries, and System i) has an image problem, but the problem isn't entirely IBM's. While the IT giant has failed to adequately communicate the benefits of the system, there are business partners that have also failed to keep their OS/400 software applications up to date with customer expectations, i.e., replacing outdated green screens with Web-based GUIs. Arterial Software is doing its part to convert the legions with its aXes suite of iSeries Web enablement solutions, which was updated in August.

Aterial XML eBusiness Server, or aXes, enables iSeries users to replace traditional 5250 green screens with Web browser interfaces. The software, which is developed at Arterial headquarters near Melbourne, Australia, works by capturing 5250 screen data directly from the program I/O, and transforming it into a lightweight XML document that's compressed and sent to a Web browser, where it's uncompressed and displayed. Users can also write new aXes applications using the open source Lua 5 scripting language.

aXes does its screen magic automatically, and brings the added bonus of avoiding IBM's 5250 interactive tax and enabling users to utilize the full CPW rating of their machines to run interactive programs via aXes.

In previous releases, aXes, which is distributed in the U.S. by Linoma Software, was known for providing excellent screen response time in converted applications, which has been an issue when users move from the extremely efficient 5250 datastream to less nimble graphical screens. The tradeoff for this fast response time, according to Linoma, was less "prettiness" of the GUI.

With the new aXes version 1.3 release, Arterial has done some work to boost the look and feel (the all-important "prettiness quotient"--ignore it at your own risk). At the same time, Arterial says it has also boosted response times and improved the manageability of the program.

Users will find more elegant-looking screens with aXes 1.3 through support for things like converting green-screen menu items and subfile options into clickable links, turning function keys into push buttons, and rendering subfiles as scrollable tables. Similarly, URLs are now recognized and rendered as hyperlinks in aXes 1.3, which is as it should be.

aXes 1.3 also brings support for dynamic GUI recognition capabilities, which will lessen the care and feeding of aXes programs, says Arterial chief architect Bob Moore.

"In aXes version 1.3.0, dynamic GUI is something we wanted to do with accuracy, consequently aXes uses live application meta data to achieve this," Moore says. "Other approaches generally rely on brittle screen identification regimes with more work and data to maintain and synchronize. In contrast, aXes establishes (at run time) the display file and record formats currently active, avoiding issues related to contriving and maintaining an additional set of pseudo meta information."

Arterial has also boosted mouse functions with this release, including support for programmable mouse buttons, support for treating a double-click as "enter," and various improvements to copy-and-paste functions.

The product's document management capabilities have also been improved through support for converting AFPDS, IPDS, and SCS Final Form text spooled file output to PDF. The suite's Data Explorer and Web Spooler components also benefit from better password protection. Support for word wrapping and DBCS continued fields were also included in the new release.

Arterial is giving users a selection of pricing options with aXes 1.3. Users can choose from session-based or processor-based licensing options for the Terminal Server and Web Spooler components of the suite. Last year, Linoma was selling aXes version 1.23 starting at $7,850 for a group of 20 users on a P05 box, but check with your vendor for current pricing.

aXes version 1.3 is available now. For more information, visit www.arterialsoftware.com or www.linomasoftware.com/modx/products/axes.

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