Welcome to Integration Manager and Data General Connect

Before You Begin

Welcome to the Data General Connect Guide. This Guide is a companion to the Integration Manager User's Guide, which details how to use all the features of Integration Manager, except for the Connect Component Editors. If you haven't looked at the Integration Manager User's Guide yet, please familiarize yourself with it before using this Guide.

Integration Manager provides separate Component Editors for each Connect. The special features of each component editor are described in separate Guides like this one.

If you have been using Integration Manager, and are familiar with the XML Map Component Editor, then this Guide should get you started with the Data General Component Editor.

Before you can begin working with the Data General Connect you must have installed it into your existing Integration Manager. Likewise, before you can run any Services built with this Connect in the Integration Manager Enterprise Server environment, you must have already installed the server-side software for this Connect into Integration Manager Enterprise Server.

NOTE: To be successful with this Component Editor, you must be familiar with the Data General environment and the particular applications that you want to XML-enable.

About Integration Manager Connects

Integration Manager is built upon a simple hub and spoke architecture (Fig.1-1). The hub is a robust XML transformation engine that accepts requests via XML documents, performs transformation processes on those documents and interfaces with XML-enabled applications, and returns an XML response document. The spokes, or Connects, are plug-in modules that "XML-enable" sources of data that are not XML aware, bringing their data into the hub for processing as XML. These data sources can be anything from legacy COBOL/applications to Message Queues to HTML pages.

HubSpoke

Integration Manager Connects can be categorized by the integration strategy each one employs to XML-enable an information source. The integration strategies are a reflection of the major divisions used in modern systems designs for Internet-based computing architectures. Depending on your B2B needs and the architecture of your legacy applications, Integration Manager can integrate your business systems at the User Interface, Program Logic, or Data levels. (See below.) Fred

What is the Data General Connect?

The Data General Connect XML-enables Dasher 412 terminal-based systems using the User Interface integration strategy by hooking into the Data General terminal stream.

Data General Terminal is a specification for interfacing with Data General and DG/UX applications. Many applications have been developed for Data General terminal-based systems, which allow remote execution of their interface through Telnet protocols. Host screens can be sent to a client and keyed data can be accepted from the client. This interaction, through a so-called "dumb" terminal, means that all the data is processed on the host computer. Data General terminal emulation software can be used to make a microcomputer or PC act as if it were a Data General-type terminal while it is communicating with a host computer.

Using the Data General Connect, you can make legacy applications and their business logic available to the internet, extranet, or intranet processes. The Data General Connect Component Editor allows you to build Web Services by simply navigating through an application as if you were at a terminal session. You will use XML documents to drive inquiries and updates into the screens rather than keying, use the messages returned from application screens to make the same decisions as if you were at a terminal, and move data and responses into XML documents that can be returned to the requestor or continue to be processed. The Data General terminal screens appear in the Native Environment Pane of the Data General Component Editor.

About Integration Manager's Data General Component

Much like the XML Map component, the Data General Component is designed to map, transform, and transfer data between two different XML templates (i.e., request and response XML documents). However, it is specialized to make a connection (via TCP/IP) to a host application, process the data using elements from a screen, and then map the results to an output DOM. You can then act upon the output DOM in any way that makes sense for your integration application. In essence, you're able to capture data from, or push data to, a host system without ever having to alter the host system itself.

A Data General Component can perform simple data manipulations, such as mapping and transferring data from an XML document into a host program, or perform "screen scraping" of a Data General terminal program, putting the harvested data into an XML document. A Data General Component has all the functionality of the XML Map Component and can process XSL, send mail, and post and receive XML documents using the HTTP protocol.

What Applications Can You Build Using the Data General User Interface Component Editor?

Integration Manager, and consequently the Data General Connect, can be applied to the the following types of applications:

Business to Business Web Service interactions such as supply chain applications.
Consumer to Business interactions such as self-service applications from Web Browsers.
Enterprise Application Integrations where information from heterogeneous systems is combined or chained together.

Fundamentally, the Data General Component Editor allows you to extend any XML integration you are building to include any of your business applications that support Data General-based terminal interactions (See the Integration Manager User's Guide for more information.)

For example, you may have an application that retrieves a product's description, picture, price, and inventory from regularly updated databases and displays it in a Web browser. By using the Data General Component Editor, you can now get the current product information from the operational systems and the static information (e.g., a picture) from a database and merge the information from these separate information sources before displaying it to a user. This provides the same current information to both your internal and external users.