On Tue, 10/24, Bill Shaver <[log in to unmask]> wrote
 
: Dear Colleagues:
:
: We, a state agency that supports a Community College system, use HP3000s
: heavily.  There are, however, times when our users must login to another
: agency's IBM mainframe to enter data (employee insurance registrations)
: into their system.  Our users are requesting that we come up with a means
: for them to enter the data (once) on their HP3000 and have it update the
: other agency's IBM either in the background or in batch.
:
: The obvious solution (at least for us) was to create a batch file to feed
: the changes to the IBM system.  We do this with other agencies, labor
: unions, and banks -- no big deal.  It turns out that the other agency
: does not want to write a batch update/interface to their system.
:
: I guess what I am wondering is, are there tools that might read a file
: and feed it to the IBM as if a user were keying it in.  It would
: obviously need to be smart enough to trap errors and keep itself
: synchronized.
 
: If there are other approaches, I would be pleased to hear them also.
 
We have an application which takes transactions fed to it via a message
file and feeds the data to an IMS-based application on an IBM using the
3270 intrinsics.  Basically each transaction has an ID which is used
to locate a processing 'script' in a database.  This script is a fairly
simple set of sequence steps which tell the application what commands/PF
keys to use to navigate the menus/IMS application, where to place the
data from the transaction record into the screen and then how to check
for any errors.  So basically the application looks like a user signed-on
to a 3270-type terminal, with all the appropriate key stokes, etc.
 
I believe you'd need at least one 3270-based product from HP in order to
have the intrinsics to do this.  Not sure my company will let me give
this away, but if you're interested in building one, learning more or
possibly getting a copy of our utility, give me a call @ 713/425-5957.
 
-- Jerry Fochtman