• Post Reply Bookmark Topic Watch Topic
  • New Topic
programming forums Java Mobile Certification Databases Caching Books Engineering Micro Controllers OS Languages Paradigms IDEs Build Tools Frameworks Application Servers Open Source This Site Careers Other Pie Elite all forums
this forum made possible by our volunteer staff, including ...
Marshals:
  • Campbell Ritchie
  • Jeanne Boyarsky
  • Ron McLeod
  • Paul Clapham
  • Liutauras Vilda
Sheriffs:
  • paul wheaton
  • Rob Spoor
  • Devaka Cooray
Saloon Keepers:
  • Stephan van Hulst
  • Tim Holloway
  • Carey Brown
  • Frits Walraven
  • Tim Moores
Bartenders:
  • Mikalai Zaikin

Handling dumb terminals

 
Ranch Hand
Posts: 94
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
Hello
One of my clients wants to migrate his current systems to J2EE based systems. Server side is not a problem but all his client machines are dumb terminals. They use APT which comes with sybase database to provide a console based front end on these dumb terminals. They dont want to dump these dumb terminals. I have no clue how to handle this in Java. Anybody got any ideas?? Any articles?? Plz let me know
Cheers
Jayram
 
Ranch Hand
Posts: 3451
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
Hi Joshi,
I didn't know anyone was still using dumb terminals I'm not real clear on the architecture on the client side, but generally speaking you'll probably need to set up some sort of messaging service on the clients to translate the output from the DT's to what your server is expecting. This may or may not involve a technique called screen scraping which extracts information from the DT's. You will probably have to write some native code to bridge between the legacy system and your Java code. While you're struggling through all this, try to come up with reasons why your client should donate their legacy equipment to the local landfill
Hope this helps
Michael Morris
SCJP2
 
Ranch Hand
Posts: 399
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
If you can incorporate the existing terminal interface software into your system, you may want to do that.
One widely used C package for interacting with dumb terminal is called "curses". A quick seach revealed Java-based project called jcurzez. If you are not familiar with dumb terminals and their variations and limitations, you may want to find a book on curses.
 
jayram
Ranch Hand
Posts: 94
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
I am not very sure why they are still using it. But i think they dont want to move away from it because they think dumb terminals dont have any software maintianance costs. Also their users (500) are very much used to that environment so they dont want to change the console based interface. Now I am really at loss on how to do this in java ...maybe i need to see their architecture first...
I am just hoping to meet someone who has been in this DT hell before...
 
Don't get me started about those stupid light bulbs.
reply
    Bookmark Topic Watch Topic
  • New Topic