Web Option
From 2EWiki
CA 2E Web Option is a web-enablement tool for 2E (and non-2E) 5250 applications. Web Option takes the 5250 data stream and automatically converts it to HTML. The conversion is based on user-definable "skeletons" which can be customized to enhance the appearance and functionality of the resultant web page.
Some of the advantages of Web Option include:
- Creates pure HTML pages with no download requirements for end-users
- Integration with 2E simplifies the development cycle
- Completely IBM i-based solution that uses the Apache Web Server on i OS
- Fast and cost-effective way to web-enable an existing 5250 application.
- Multiple language support including single-byte and double-byte languages.
Web Option is being regularly updated with enhancements, most recently in 2E 8.5.
Architecture
Web Option consists of 2 parts:
- The HTML Generator, which initially generates the skeleton web pages. A skeleton is generated for each possible screen (so there could be multiple skeletons per display file). The HTML Generator can be invoked directly from within a 2E model (from various different model screens) or from a command line. The HTML Generator is a licensed product, for which a machine-specific license code must be supplied.
- The Runtime Server, which runs a client interactive job, merging screen data into the pre-generated skeleton pages and displaying them to the browser. If a screen is displayed for which a skeleton has not already been generated, the Runtime Server will display a Just-In-Time (JIT) web page, which resembles the underlying green-screen. The Runtime Server is unlicensed, meaning that it can be deployed to many separate machines with no license requirements.
