EHLLAPI Extender News
Keywords: EHLLAPI Extender News
*** New Extender: Enhanced HLLAPI Extender ***
Date: Friday, September 27, 2002 10:29 AMA new WinBatch extender has been released.
Enhanced HLLAPI Extender
The EHLLAPI extender allows a WinBatch script to take control of a mainframe [e.g. 3270] or AS/400 [e.g. 5250] terminal emulator session in Reflection IBM, NetManage RUMBA, Attachmate myExtra! and in just about any other terminal emulator that does 3270/5250 emulation and which implements IBM's Enhanced HLLAPI interface. The HummingBird HostExplorer software should work with this extender, too, but no copies of HostExplorer were avilable to test with during the development of this extender.
Enhanced HLLAPI [High Level Language API] is a standard method that IBM developed which allows application programs to interfact with a mainframe or AS/400 terminal emulator so that tasks like screen-scraping could be performed.
Using this extender, it is possible to read the contents of the emulator display area and to send keystrokes & "AID" keys [e.g. ENTER, CLEAR, RESET, the PF* and PA* keys, etc...] in a way that does not depend on the built-in scripting capabilities [or even OLE server functionality] of any particular terminal emulation software. It is also possible to search for text in the display area, to search for text within defined fields, copy text to/from the display area, copy text to/from a field, search for fields that may be defined, interrogate the display area, interrogate a field, intercept keystrokes, wait for notification that the host has sent an update to the display area and many other tasks can be performed, too.
If you've ever needed to have a WinBatch script interact directly and seamlessly with a mainframe or AS/400 terminal emulator, then this extender is what you need to do that.