Toolkit for Front Ends to IBM Mainframes Uses MS Windows
 
Microbytes Daily News Service
Copyright (c) 1989, McGraw-Hill, Inc.
About a year from now, your airline ticket agency or your bank
could be connected to an IBM mainframe transaction-processing
system through a PC running Microsoft Windows and a new
application called I/F Builder, developed by a new company called
Viewpoint Systems. I/F Builder, which stands for Interface
Builder (no relation to NeXT's Interface Builder), is a graphics
toolkit for building user interfaces to IBM mainframe CICS and
IMS transaction processing applications.
 
Viewpoint's first product is a data-entry front end that allows
users to build menu- and icon-driven SAA (Systems Application
Architecture) compatible data-entry screens, which run under
Windows and directly access the mainframe transaction processing
application. The product can also capture data screens in IBM's
3270 terminal format, which can then be cut and pasted in other
Windows applications.
 
According to Viewpoint cofounder Ken Gardner, there are about
100,000 CICS transaction systems in the US, connected to 11
million terminals, 3 million of which are IBM PCs or compatibles.
With the current cumbersome mainframe interfaces, training
data-entry personnel is a lengthy and laborious process.
According to Gardner, interfaces developed with I/F Builder allow
data-entry operators to become proficient with the system in a
day.
 
While there are some high-level language products for writing
graphical front ends to IBM mainframe applications (Easel and
Infront, for example), I/F Builder is the first that allows a
toolkit building approach with no need for programming, Gardner
said. In a demonstration for Microbytes Daily, the product
appeared easy and intuitive to use. You build pop-up menus and
data-entry forms by selecting from lists of items, which
represent the data structure of the mainframe application. You
assign function keys and icons to the application according to
IBM's Common User Access specification, which provides for
standard usage of certain keystrokes for specific functions.
 
The data-entry product will ship in early December and is priced
at $45,000 per mainframe host and $595 per workstation running
Windows. The company plans to introduce a Presentation Manager
version in mid-1990. But, according to Gardner, most of the
company's beta sites and corporate customers (primarily financial
institutions) are more interested in Windows than PM.
 
Contact: Viewpoint Systems, 1900 S. Norfolk St, Suite 310, San
Mateo, CA 94403; (415) 578-1591.
 
                              --- Nick Baran
 
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