Non-Techies to Assemble OS/400 Apps with New Software from Attachmate

by Alex Woodie

Attachmate is shipping new software this month that lets users take the fields of OS/400 or mainframe green-screen applications and reassemble them in new and useful ways. The software, called myEXTRA! Presentation Builder, was designed so managers can streamline user access to specific parts of applications, even if the manager doesn't have technical skills. The company also announced limited availability of a new product that it says will eliminate thousands of keystrokes per day for users of its emulators.

In the past, Attachmate users needed programming skills if they wanted to pick certain fields from their 5250 green screens and to combine them into a single screen, which would make it easier to do certain functions on an application that otherwise required navigating multiple screens. To do that with Attachmate software would probably have required the myEXTRA! Host Publishing System, which requires programming skills, says Melissa Kelly, a product marketing manager with the Bellevue, Washington, company.

The myEXTRA! Presentation Builder includes a WYSIWYG design tool that lets managers assemble their new application screens. The design tool tests and debugs the new application on the fly, and automatically generates Java code, which can be served from an Apache Web server, residing on the host or offloaded to a Windows box. The software requires no modifications to the host application, uses 5250 or 3270 data stream as its inputs, and presents either a green screen or an auto-generated GUI to the user.

"The software takes out all the noise of a specific task, takes out the clutter and simplifies the application," Kelly says. Customers who could benefit from myEXTRA! Presentation Builder include departments of large companies where the manager doesn't have access to programmers, or companies looking to further customize and control what aspects of a host application their customers or business partners have access to, she says.

A financial services firm is using myEXTRA! Presentation Builder to restrict access to its mainframe application. The company, which manages loans for banks, previously used a separate application for authentication and failed to prevent customers from viewing data before they were authenticated. Now the company is relying on myEXTRA! Presentation Builder to handle the authentication, as well as the display of customized data to customers. Attachmate customers are also looking to use the software to streamline navigation of a call center application, Kelly says.

The myEXTRA! Presentation Builder started shipping October 17. Licenses for the software are $395 per desktop or Web browser session. The company includes one server component for every 10 desktop licenses.

Last week, Attachmate also announced a new emulation software product called myEXTRA! Advanced Productivity Features, which it claims will be as easy to use as Microsoft Office.

The new Productivity Features add-on gives users of Attachmate's emulators the following new functionality:

• Configurable spell-check functionality gives users the capability to correct misspelled words as they are typed.
  
  
• Auto expand lets users pre-set acronyms or shortcuts for long words, phrases, or repeat commands.
  
  
• Auto complete presents a series of commonly used keystrokes or "cryptic" commands in a drop-down box that can be invoked with a mouse click.
  
  
• Recent typing keeps a list of all cryptic commands typed into a host application and lets users view and select repeat words and commands.
  
  
• With the integrated browser there's no need to open separate windows on the desktop.

Markus Nitschke, Attachmate's vice president of marketing and product management, says "Once people try these features, they will wonder how they ever managed without them."

Unfortunately for OS/400 shops, the beta version of Productivity Features is only available for mainframe emulation. But rest assured, Nitschke says that OS/400, as well as Unix, will be supported when the product becomes generally available later this quarter, or early next year, with the upcoming release of myEXTRA! Presentation Services 8.0.

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