Screen Scrapers

[bill.clifford@bmw.com.au]

Is anyone out there using a screen scraper to convert green screens into a GUI frontend? We intend investigating a couple of products - NEWLOOK and GUI/400. Any pros's/con's/reccomendations? Would also be an advantge to be able to use the product via an Intranet. TIA Bill

[daly.michael@verizon.net]

I just finished a trial of BOSANOVA's "MorphMaster" product. It's the only one I'm familiar with. I have to say that I'm not all that impressed with it. The way it works is by parsing the data stream searching for certain elements common to most green screen applications. When it recognizes particular inputs, it converts them to windows-based elements. The problem is that unless you followed IBM's CUA guidelines like the Bible, some of your programs screen elements, and hterefore functionality, are not going to be recognized by the parser. This means they won't get converted. There are ways to tailor the parser to recognize your specific standards. But it's not easy and even less fun. My two cents,Michael

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href="http://www.freshpoint.com"> color="#408080">Michael Daly, Sr. P/A FreshPoint, Inc. (972) 392-8169

[Guest.Visitor]

On Thursday, January 21, 1999, 02:30 PM, Bill Clifford wrote: Is anyone out there using a screen scraper to convert green screens into a GUI frontend? We intend investigating a couple of products - NEWLOOK and GUI/400. Any pros's/con's/reccomendations? Would also be an advantge to be able to use the product via an Intranet. TIA Bill Let me guess. Someone in management is pushing you to research this because the client's say that your competition is using GUI. Been there. The screen scrapers I've seen look GUI but in actuality are still character based are don't offer true GUI functions like radio buttons and combo boxes and the sort. Chris