International Business Machines Corporation

Brian Thomas Webb

Yongcheng Li

Yih-Shin Tan

David Blair Gilgen

James M Mathewson, Ii

Gregory Thomas Knowles

Steven Dale Ims

Bradley Thomas Marchesseault

Thomas Joseph Brawn

Mark Anthony McMillan

Michael Srihari

Scott Matthew Quint

A method and apparatus for navigating screens in a legacy host system. In a preferred embodiment, requests for specific legacy host screens are received by a server. The server then navigates to the appropriate screen within the legacy host system and retrieves the host screen. Any intermediate screens navigated by the server in reaching the host screen are not displayed to the user. If variable data need be entered to access the host screen, the server sends the user a submittable form on which to enter the appropriate information, which, once entered and sent to the server, is used by the server to retrieve the host screen. Once the host screen has been retrieved, the server formats it into a web page format using a hypertext language and sends the screen to the user. Other screens within the legacy host system are accessed by user selection of selectable links displayed to the user.

Legacy host system hot link modeling and navigation

A method of providing updated host screen information to a client application utilizing a request-response communications model includes establishing a first connection between the client application and a server application, wherein the server application provides updated host screen information to the client application in response to requests from the client application. A second connection is established between a monitor application and the server application. A notification of the availability of updated host screen information is received via the second connection at the monitor application. The updated host screen information is requested over the first connection responsive to receiving the notification. The requested updated host screen information is received at the client application and displaying utilizing the client application. Related systems and computer program products are also disclosed.

Methods, systems, and computer program products that request updated host screen information from host systems in response to notification by servers

A method, system, and computer program product for optimizing recognition of presentation space data. Presentation space data is sent from a legacy host application to a workstation. A workstation application monitors arrival of multiple predetermined presentation space definitions, and invokes an appropriate target object to process each recognized presentation space of interest. Prioritization techniques are used to optimize the recognition process, whereby higher priority definitions are processed first. A time of day heuristic is defined, which influences priority of presentation space recognition according to the time of day in which specific presentation space data typically arrives at the user's workstation. Priority pools may be used to provide a desired granularity of priority. Priority may be learned dynamically by the implementation, and may be initialized explicitly (or defaulted). Priority of a definition may be demoted if an inactivity timer expires. Priority information may be persisted to a data store.

Optimizing host application presentation space recognition events through matching prioritization

Screens generated by a host application are reformatted for viewing by applying styles to the host screens in response to recognized components included therein. In particular, a style defines a desired look and layout to be applied to a respective host screen. The styles are applied to the respective host screens based on recognizing components of the host screen at run time. For example, first and second styles can be associated with respective first and second components included in host screens. The first style is applied to the host screen in which the first component is recognized and the second style is applied to the host screen in which the second component is recognized. Accordingly, the application of the first and second styles provide respective first and second reformatted screens.

Methods, systems, and computer program products for applying styles to host screens based on host screen content

A technique, system, and computer program for run-time translation of procedurally-oriented Emulator High Level Language Application Programming Interface (EHLLAPI) calls into object-based host access calls (such as those provided with IBM's Host Access Control Library or the Open Host Interface Objects under development by the IETF), without requiring changes to the workstation EHLLAPI applications. This translation, in addition to generating the appropriate method invocation, reconciles the operational differences between EHLLAPI's sequential function call model and the event-driven approach used in the object-oriented model.

Run-time translation of legacy emulator high level language application programming interface (EHLLAPI) calls to object-based calls

A technique, system, and computer program for enabling workstation software applications to efficiently and reliably use legacy host application data streams, without requiring change to the host applications. This is achieved by defining attributes of presentation spaces (screens or parts of screens) that are of interest to the workstation application, defining target objects to process the legacy host data, registering these attribute definitions and corresponding target objects with a screen recognition object, using the screen recognition object to monitor the host data streams for occurrence of a registered screen, and generating an asynchronous event to invoke the target object when a registered screen is detected. The efficiency is obtained because the workstation application programmer no longer has to write code to monitor the host data streams for the screens of interest. The reliability is obtained because the application programmer now reliably knows when a screen of interest appears in the host data stream.

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Raleigh, NC, United States of America

Brian Thomas Webb