Cost Effective Modernization with IBM Rational HATS

Every organization with application(s) on Mainframe, System i or System z wants to modernize to achieve the maximum benefits out of their investment. However, the old application cannot be totally discarded. So let us see Existing application is important.

We need to understand that, the Organization has made a significant investment over the years to develop fully functional applications, finely-tuned deployed in a reliable, robust and scalable infrastructure. However, their applications can only be accessed by a terminal, and are difficult to navigate. Furthermore, It’s hard to train the new generation of employees to use these old-style applications, therefore customers are faced with high training costs. There are many limitations of the legacy applications like:

• Access via character / text based terminals
• Non-intuitive, difficult to navigate user interfaces
• Difficult to integrate in modern business processes
• Practically impossible to incorporate APIs, Services, Mobile Version, etc.

There are two possible solutions here,

1. Modernize the existing application
2. Build a new application

It is much less expensive to reuse existing applications than to write new applications from scratch. Reusing robust applications also reduces the risk and allows for faster time to market.

On the other hand if company opts for building application from scratch, then cost of developing everything is very high both from monetary and resources perspective. The most difficult part is to migrate the decades old data, cleanse it and then use it. As a thumb rule, building from scratch takes 5 times more than reusing the existing applications. In green screen applications the complexity goes to whole another level. Imagine, data of say 2 decades needs to be cleansed and then inserted into the newer application. To enhance the complexity, the new application has to gone through the entire SDLC phases of Analysis to UAT. So in short, there is a lot of pain involved when opting for 'reinventing the wheel".

The decision to go for HATS brings in a lot of benefits like:

• Improvement in the appearance of user interfaces
• Accessibility of existing applications from a common portal
• Reduction in the learning curve learning curve for new employees
• Extension of the application to to new customers who rely on web application ease-of-use
• Very helpful for the Customers who want to use existing applications in their new business processes, use SOA, Web Services

HATS modernizes the interface, that we have established so far. Let us discuss in more details what exactly HATS can do in the quest of modernizing the old green screen legacy applications.

1. Table widget
2. Scrollable Table widget
3. Pagination Table widget
4. Clickable Sub File widget
5. Screen Combination with Clickable & Scrollable widget
6. Sub File widget with Dropdown
7. Sub File widget with Checkbox or Radio button
8. Sub File widget with Multiple Operations Selection
9. Calendar/Inline Calendar widget
10. Advanced widget for Calendar / Scheduler
11. Mixed Case Component

1. Screen Function Keys as Buttons
2. Host Functions Keys in Popup
3. Keys Controls

1. Dynamic Menus
2. Tree Menu
3. Pop Up Menus

1. HATS Mobile Device Support
2. IBM HATS using Responsive Web Design

1. Multiple Green Screens Data on a Tabbed page
2. Data Export in PDF, Excel and other formats
3. Attractive Popup Window
4. Dynamic Graphs
5. Google Map API Implementation
6. Barcode Implementation
7. Social Media Integration
8. Print Support
9. Currency /Dollar Format
10. Data access through direct JDBC
11. Pagination

1. Multiple Screens Data on a Webpage Via HATS Web Service
2. HATS Web Service Consumption in .NET
3. Consumption of non-HATS web service (WSDL)

1. AJAX in HATS
2. HATS in Portal
3. DOJO in HATS
4. jQuery in HATS
5. Integration with other Applications

These items are discussed in details in our webinar more details. Please visit the pages for the videos. Please note, you have to fill in the form in order to access the videos.