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by Joel Klebanoff
Published 05/10/2007
Businesses run System i green-screen applications.
Employees use wireless-enabled PDAs and smart phones. It stands to reason that
productivity could be enhanced by linking the two to turn handheld devices into
System i clientsassuming it can be done in a way that overcomes the
screen and keyboard limitations of mobile devices. That's the premise underlying
Strategi
mobileACCESS from ADVANCED
BusinessLink. It easily allows users and system administrators to access
5250 applications on many mobile devices sporting WiFi or cellular wide area
network (WAN) connectivity.
On the client side, mobileACCESS runs as a
Java program. Consequently, a good Java Virtual Machine (JVM) is a requirement
for the mobile device. This is available in Windows CE or Windows Mobile 5 or
higher, as well as in a few other operating systems, such as Linux, that are
found on handheld devices. Apart from the need for a JVM, mobileACCESS is
platform-independent. Any operating system that doesn't currently include an
adequate JVM will immediately become compatible with mobileACCESS should the OS
incorporate a JVM in a future release.
One additional requirement for the
mobile device is a link, such as a USB port or one of the industry-standard
wireless connectivity alternatives that can be used to load the Java program. At
least one usable link is standard on most current mobile devices, so this is
rarely a limiting factor.
Screen size is not an issue. The mobileACCESS
product supports anything from the smallest to the largest of screens.
On
the host side, mobileACCESS does not use any interactive processing, so, no
matter how widely it's deployed throughout the enterprise, there is no need to
upgrade the System i processor group in order to run mobileACCESS under your
existing System i license.
With mobileACCESS, administration can be
centralized, as it is entirely host-based. Furthermore, because there is no need
to install and support host access software on mobile devices, it's easy and
cost-effective to support a large number of remote users. In addition, because
mobileACCESS loads natively on System i, it avoids the security threats of
gateways and front-end processors.
Traditionally, the biggest impediment
to using handheld devices as clients for System i applications has been the
limited screen real estate on these devices. Even when the necessary
connectivity was available, such as through a built-in Web browser and
browser-based green-screen emulation, the small screen size meant that
maneuvering through a 5250 application was too cumbersome to be practical unless
the application was specially designed for that purpose. Yet custom-designing
applications for mobile devices requires costly coding that may make this an
unaffordable option.
With mobileACCESS, a couple of novel techniques
overcome the screen-size dilemma, without the need for custom development.
SmartPanning automatically shifts the displayed text and fields to keep the data
entry position on the screen as a user enters data and navigates through the
application. Screen Compaction manages the display output to take actions such
as eliminating excessive white space to make more productive use of the limited
screen size. The use of these techniques makes it possible for mobileACCESS to
employ readable font sizes, without diminishing the usability of the application
even on a small display. And, if something isn't easily readable, a simple zoom
function allows users to take a closer look.
The nature of cellular
networks presents an additional problem when accessing applications over a smart
phone. Connections occasionally drop. But mobileACCESS deals with this by
putting users back to the cursor position they left off on when they sign back
in after a dropped connection, thereby preventing any aggravating loss of work
and eliminating the need to manually pan through screens in order find where
they left off.
Function keys present another challenge. Green-screen
applications use them. Few mobile devices have them. To address this issue,
mobileACCESS generates icons to represent an application's function keys. This
is done automatically, without the need for any programming. Users can use their
normal mobile device input method—typically a fingertip or stylus—to
select the appropriate icon and simulate the pressing of the function key.
Similarly, when a green-screen application displays a menu, hotspots are
automatically created. Users can touch those hotspots to navigate through the
application.
Green-screen applications often send reports to printers.
This is an obvious dilemma for a wireless device that is usually used away from
the office. By making spooled reports available on mobile devices, mobileACCESS
solves this problem. Each Strategi user has an out queue assigned to him or her.
When a spool file is sent to a user's out queue, it appears in his or her
Strategi mobileACCESS browser as an HTML document.
According to Sherry
Toly, director of marketing at ADVANCED BusinessLink, ''The wow factor of
mobileAccess is that productivity is amazing. When you try to make applications
work well on a small device, you have a lot of challenges to overcome. Just
managing and maintaining connectivity in a wireless world can be difficult. We
pull all of the components together to create a high-performance
environment.''
ADVANCED BusinessLink's mobileACCESS is a member of the
company's Strategi suite of products, which includes solutions for
Web-enablement, mobility, and service-oriented architectures (SOA). Founded in
1987 in Sydney, Australia, ADVANCED BusinessLink is now headquartered in the
Seattle, Washington, area, but it maintains a sales and support office in
Sydney, as well as in Paris, London, and Kuala Lumpur. The company has more than
500 customers in 22 countries. For more information, contact ADVANCED
BusinessLink. Contact information is provided below.
Joel
Klebanoff is a consultant, a writer, and president of Klebanoff Associates, Inc., a Toronto,
Canada-based marketing communications firm, and author of BYTE-ing Satire. Joel has 25 years
experience working in IT, first as a programmer/analyst and then as a marketer.
He holds a Bachelor of Science in computer science and an MBA, both from the
University of Toronto. Contact Joel at joel@klebanoff.com.
ADVANCED
BusinessLink
5808 Lake Washington
Blvd.
Suite
100
Kirkland, WA
98033
USA
Web:
www.businesslink.com
Email:
sales@businesslink.com
Tel:
425.602.4777
Fax: 425.602.4789
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