Products - ScreenJet VPlus Migration Strategy
Until the announcement on November 14th 2001 by Hewlett Packard, that it planned to discontinue
sales and support of the HPe3000, ScreenJet developments had been aimed entirely at enhancing the
user interface on the HPe3000. Those developments had already provided the tools to convert and
replicate the VPlus functions.
ScreenJet CEO, Alan Yeo, said "The company will now be concentrating its efforts entirely on VPlus migration".
To this end the company has also prepared a White Paper on the issues that will affect the migration of
VPlus based applications. The paper is aimed at anyone who has to consider migration, and attempts to cover
the issues that will be faced regardless of the route or tools they choose. Go to
White Papers to read the paper.
ScreenJet Ltd has subsequently announced a series of tools to automate and assist with the migration of
VPlus applications. The tools which leverage on the expertise gained in developing the current
ScreenJet VPlus GUI product, provide multiple conversion options.
Uniquely the ScreenJet tools will allow the automatic conversion and optional further enhancement
of the user interface whilst the applications are still running on the HPe3000. This makes ScreenJet
ideal for those who intend to remain using the HPe3000 for the foreseeable future, as well as those
looking for a faster migration.
Conversion options are then provided for several ACUCOBOL-GT, formats. Other formats such as
XML & XHTML may also be available. ScreenJet is also launching a revised version of its VPlus
Intercept API that will allow applications to optionally retain their existing VPlus screen
handling calls and procedures.
For users converting to ACUCOBOL-GT the ScreenJet tools can convert either the original VPlus forms,
or those already enhanced to a Windows GUI by ScreenJet directly into the AcuBench formats.
This will enable HPe3000 applications thus migrated to benefit from the full ACUCOBOL-GT development
and deployment options. The ScreenJet VPlus API will also be available in ACUCOBOL-GT,
thus optionally providing further ease of portability to any of the 600 platforms that
ACUCOBOL-GT can be deployed on.
ACUCOBOL-GT would seem to be one of the natural migration options for those applications
written in HP COBOLII as Acucorp has recently released Version 5.2.2 of its extend 5 product
line on the HPe3000. This release will provide support for HP COBOL language extensions and HP
Intrinsics, thereby providing direct access to Image and many other third party offerings.