Accelerator Fusion - Plug-Ins for looksoftware
newlook from looksoftware extends the life of legacy applications with an instant makeover that provides flexible presentation options. Supporting the diverse client needs of today’s businesses, you can generate application support of your System i (AS/400, iSeries and i5) host applications to rich client devices, zero-deployment web thin clients, and an amazing array of mobile devices.
For developers working with .NET, Visual LANSA, or our own Accelerator Development Solutions, Surround has developed a newlook wrapper that makes plugging in modernized 5250 applications incredibly simple. To add to the beautifully tight integration this provides, we created new controls to manage multiple newlook sessions throughout a system, making this complex technological challenge invisible to the developer. It’s more Software at the Speed of Business!
Open Source from Surround
Best of all, we’ve released these Software Plug-Ins at absolutely no cost to you as Surround’s first foray into Open Source software. Truth be told, there wasn’t that much development effort required, but it just had to be done. The hard work was done by looksoftware creating newlook, the SOArchitect and its powerful transaction recorder. We're just helping you capitalize on this great technology in Visual LANSA.
How do the Plug-ins Work
- Modernize 5250 Application Screens – use the incredibly robust modernization tools within newlook to re-purpose your Application 5250 screens.
- Create Navigation Scripts – Use the powerful Transaction Recorder in SOArchitect to create to record how you navigate your 5250 applications to and from the modernized screens.
- Plug-in – Use our newlook plug-ins for Visual LANSA and/or Accelerator to embed newlook into your Application, specify the necessary Navigation Scripts and modernized 5250 screens, and seamlessly interface with information and functionality of those screens.
- Integrate – Use the Plug-in interfaces to interoperate and extend your 5250 applications with other parts of your modernized systems.
newlook plug-in for Visual LANSA
Repurpose your 5250 applications and plug them into your Visual LANSA Application. Once you plug in your first newlook screen, you’ll want to plug in more and more throughout your application, exposing greater functionality to your users. You can add screens in multiple windows, even have multiple sessions in one window. It really is quite cool. However, care should be taken as this can quickly become overdone, taxing your system with numerous and often inactive jobs.
newlook session/job management provides interfaces to identify and control how many sessions are being used and get additional information about the sessions to decide how to manage and reuse them.
Function Key Management provides interfaces to the plug-in allows you to identify programmatically what Function Keys are available on the screen and how or if to display them.
Interfaces to the plug-in can be used to perform other newlook scripted functions or for application integration and interoperability. This allows you to perform actions like delete or release order that may require different and multiple 5250 screens to process behind the scenes. Additionally you can use information on the 5250 screen(s) to perform actions like send emails, or display a Google/MS Live map of a location. The options here are many.
Sample, pre-built modernized screens
- Messages – Display Message, DSPMSG, Command and Screens
- Send Message – Send Messages, SNDMSG, Command and Screens
- Reports (Spool Files) – Work With Spool Files, WRKSPLF, Command and Screens
- User Jobs – Work With User Jobs, WRKUSRJOB, Command and Screens
- Submitted Jobs – Work With Submitted Jobs, Command and Screens
- Printers – Work with Writers, WRKWTR, Command and Screens
- Active Jobs – Work With Active Jobs, WRKACTJOB, Command and Screens
- Output Queues – Work With Output Queues, WRKOUTQ, Command and Screens
- Job Queues – Work With Job Queues, WRKJOBQ, Command and Screens
- IFS Folders – Work With Links, WRKLNK, Command and Screens
newlook plug-in for Accelerator
This plug-in is an extension of the newlook plug-in for Visual LANSA. It provides all the same functionality, integrated directly into the Accelerator for .NET and Accelerator for Visual LANSA Architecture. Now, re-purposing your existing 5250 applications couldn't be easier. Simply set up the screens in newlook and configure the framework to plug them into any part of your Accelerator application. Accelerator takes care of the rest.
Automatic Session Management allows you to configure how many separate newlook sessions a user is allowed in various functional areas of the system. This is a highly functional and robust control mechanism that enables true multi-window support and provides your users with the most productivity without adding undue burden to your system.
Function Keys are automatically set up as Accelerator commands and can be handled like any others. Additionally, they are automatically visualized into the toolbar, the Menu bar and right click Dialog Menu. All without any coding. Then, with a few key strokes, you can quickly remove unneeded functions or use Accelerator built-in security to configure them by user role.
Commands can be added to the system to easily handle the plugin interfaces and integration points. Now quickly give your users a button to send that email or display that Google or MS Live Map.
No-coding instant newlook modules - modules can be defined in Accelerator with just a couple of settings and a fully functioning newlook module is now embedded in you system with absolutely no programming.
All sample, pre-built modernized screens listed in the newlook plug-in for Visual LANSA are provided and configured into 2 pre-built applications: "400 User Options" and "400 System Options". These can be easily plugged into any Accelerator based application with a simple table entry.
Web Services and SOArchitect integration with Business Objects and Services
One of the many benefits of the Navigation Scripts built using the Transaction Recorder is that they can also, very easily, be turned into Web Services using the SOArchitect. Now you can utilize these same modernization technologies and efforts to unleash your green screens as web services. These Web Services can then be combined and integrated with the Web services provided out of the box using Accelerator Business Objects and Services.
Screen Gallery