A trio of integration software vendors, WRQ Inc., Jacada Ltd. and NEON Systems Inc., are rolling out upgraded products designed to make it easier to tap into legacy host-based and green screen applications.
WRQ this week will announce upgrades to its Reflection line of products that connects host systems to Windows and Web applications.
Reflection X, version 11.0 includes both cross-product enhancements and new features, including integrated security, support for new protocols and Linux updates, faster performance and an improved server interface.
Integrated security protocols include an OpenSSH client to encrypt X protocol, Kerberos client for tighter authentication and secure FTP support.
Updated protocols include version 1.3 of GLX and support for OpenGL 1.4. Linux compatibility is for version 3.1.4 and GNOME version 2.4 desktops.
An enhanced server interface provides improved server and connection management, while new X Server Management panes are designed for multiple X displays, officials said.
At the same time, WRQ will announce this week Reflection for the Web 6.0 that enables users to have reliable host access without all the fuss of desktop management.
What 6.0 provides is terminal emulation in a browser that at the end of the day provides secure access to applications running on certain systems.
In other words, 6.0 provides in and outside the firewall access to applications on IBM, Unix, HP and OpenVMS systems, and personalized terminal sessions on Plumtree and BEA portals.
Separately, Jacada last week released version 5 of its Terminal Emulator software, that includes a thin-client Java FTP component that makes host-based systems accessible to end users using browsers.
The addition of the Java thin client allows end users to transport files between mainframe, iSeries, Unix and Windows platforms without using a fat-client FTP, officials said.
Terminal Emulator 5 supports German and Spanish client-side user interfaces, in addition to English. With enhanced usability features, users have the ability to implement automatic proportional font sizing and hotspots.
Also last week, NEON Systems introduced Shadow Event Publisher, which publishes information from mainframe-based applications to distributed systems in real time.
Essentially what SEP does is provide a single interface for capturing and publishing mainframe events that occur within DB2, IMS and CICS environments. Without touching the application code, the system works to monitor, capture, process and publish this event information across mainframe sources to a number of messaging protocols, officials said.
The idea is that with SEP companies can count on their mainframe events to take part in event-driven architectures.
How it works is time sensitive events—market fluctuations, shipping updates or currency revaluations, for example—speed up the initiation of new workflows by helping companies to maintain consistency across databases that utilize a mainframe database for their primary system of record. BEA WebLogic extensions enable inbound communications.
Event Publisher is available as infrastructure software or a point-based adapter suite starting around $50,000.
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