Solutions for Web Enablement

The University of Northern Colorado successfully employed Shadow z/Presentation to provide mainframe access via web browsers to over 11,000 students both on and off campus. The system lets students obtain grades, register for classes, and change schedules through a user-friendly online environment. The university’s developers were able to rapidly develop the application from old ADSO dialogs used in the school’s legacy system. The new system proved so successful that applications are now being developed for the faculty.

Reduce Staff Costs, Improve Services, and Increase the Efficiency of Your Organization

Shadow’s web enablement line of products, including Shadow z/EnterpriseWeb Server and Shadow z/Presentation, provide simple access to mainframe screen applications that can be accessed by your ASP web server or your .NET and/or your Java applications. With Shadow, you can:

• Reduce staff costs otherwise spent providing services to internal personnel or customers.
• Improve services through modern, user-friendly interfaces.
• Increase the efficiency of your organization through more convenient mainframe access methods.

Shadow web enablement solutions are not to be confused with the “green screen” scrapers of old. These products offer developers a powerful capability for application transformation, entirely replacing the rigid, fixed granularity of mainframe screen-based programs with streamlined web-oriented applications.

For example, your developers could create an application that lets employees check their 401K balance from their cell phones, accessing a mainframe application that ordinarily requires navigation through multiple screens.

Streamline Mainframe Access with Web Enablement

With the current fascination surrounding SOA and real-time events, solutions that offer web enablement might go unnoticed. For many organizations, simple web enablement of mainframe data and applications can provide a tremendous boost in service quality and productivity. Familiarity and reliability are key requirements given that developers — both distributed and mainframe — can use existing skills to mold reliable mainframe code into new web based solutions.

• Re-use of existing expertise — Web-enabled applications are administered using Shadow Studio, which provides a single development environment seamlessly integrated within the IDE. Your existing web developers can employ these applications using their usual tools.
• Reduced maintenance — Shadow web enablement solutions offer “dynamic introspection,” meaning that (unlike traditional screen scrapers) screen fields are referenced by screen names rather than by row and column. If a field’s location is changed by a mainframe programmer, it will still be found by the web-enabled application.
• Increased reliability — Dynamic introspection ensures that web-enabled applications will not “break” due to minor changes made to the mainframe screen application.
• Fast time-to-market with no downtime — Developers can often install in less than one day without interrupting ongoing operations for retraining or macro recording.
• Virtually no limit on scalability — Shadow solutions can be used to develop applications giving mainframe internet access to millions or tens of millions of users.

Let DataDirect Help You Transform Mainframe Applications into Modern, User-Friendly Web Applications

If your organization can benefit from having mainframe screen-based applications simply transformed into modern, user-friendly web applications, DataDirect can help. Our Shadow suite of web-enablement products transforms CICS, VMS, IMS IMS/TM, CA-IDMS and ADSO screen-based applications into web enablement components.

To speak with an expert about how your mainframe applications can take advantage of all the benefits offered by web enablement, please call 1-800-876-3101 or complete a Request for Information form and an account executive will contact you.