"Green Screen" Mainframe Data Connectors

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parityboy

Limp Gawd
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Nov 13, 2010
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I'm only putting this here because there's no "Server" section that I could see, and mainframes were using virtualization when VMware was a just a twinkle in the founders' eyes. :p Anyway, I'm facing an upcoming project where the customer is looking to mobilise data stored in an old mainframe. Details are thin until I actually get in front of them, so they may already have something to pull data out of the system, but assuming they don't, who makes such connectors?

Many thanks. :)
 
parityboy said:
I'm only putting this here because there's no "Server" section that I could see, and mainframes were using virtualization when VMware was a just a twinkle in the founders' eyes. :p Anyway, I'm facing an upcoming project where the customer is looking to mobilise data stored in an old mainframe. Details are thin until I actually get in front of them, so they may already have something to pull data out of the system, but assuming they don't, who makes such connectors?

Many thanks. :)
Click to expand...

I think I read a customer is trying to "Mobilize data".
But what does that mean? Move it? make it available?

Then there is the mysterious connector:
"Who makes such a connector?"

:D You are either really excited or really worried about this project :D

Need more info!
What specifically are you trying to do?
What make and model of mainframe are you talking about?
What type of hardware components do you have to work with?

Looking to connect a terminal to a mainframe? (RS232/422, twinax, coax)
Looking to just get data from the mainframe (emulated storage, dump it to tape)

I'm out of guesses for now :p
 
"Green Screen" Mainframe just means that the terminals were those old ones where the typed text is actually green and not white. Probably puts the mainframe into the 80's.

Mobilizing data means they want to get the data off of it. No idea why one wouldn't just come out and say that rather than make it more obscure.

Here's how you do it; call the manufacturer and get advice from them. You definitely don't want to spin up 30 year old tapes before talking to an expert about the inevitable pitfalls.

My guess is that this is an old IBM or Unisys machine, both companies are obviously still around and will have someone on staff that can help with data rescue.
 
@thread

Many thanks for the replies.

Netwerkz101 said:
:D You are either really excited or really worried about this project :D
Click to expand...

Both. :D

By "mobilise data" I mean make it available to a mobile application (smartphone and/or tablet). We won't be pulling data from these systems' storage directly; the SI who operates them is too scared to touch them, and the people who actually know about these systems are dying out.

As I said in the OP, details are thin right now. I'm trying to do as much research as I can before I go meet them but I'm not having much success in finding out what they've deployed. As for the connectors, I know in Byte Magazine during the 1990s, there used to be adverts for such connectors which would emulate a VT100 ("screen scrape" I assume) and make the data available to a modern (at the time) multi-tiered application, but I can't remember the name of the vendor. Wyse perhaps?

It may well be that such work has already been done (hope so), but I can't elaborate until I've actually sat down with them.

I'll update the thread as I get more info.
 
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it almost sounds like you are looking for a database connector to interact directly with the Terminal app's DB. Trying to find something that'll screen scrape will be fruitless. Either way if you aren't actually developing the Mobile App, I'd stand back and let the client and App developer duke it out. Getting yourself in the middle will only get you sucked into the inevitable he said/she said scenario.
 
I don't understand the premise of this effort.

Data exists on some old mainframe, and by old I mean 20-30 years old.
That data is now supposed to be provided to mobile devices?

If the above is true then it seems to me that the key is to get the data off of the old system (which may die any second) and provide the data on modern systems using modern database technologies. This looks like a data rescue job to me, preserve historical data for future use.
 
It's possible there is some legacy app that runs on the mainframe and they are fine with that but need 'mobile access' to it?
 
@danswartz

That is basically what the situation is. In reality, the application eventually needs to move off of that mainframe, but that's not my problem. My job is to connect it to the mobile front end. As I said above, I'm hoping that the work to pull data from that mainframe and pull it into middleware has already been done, but I'm trying to find out as much as possible just in case that work has not been done.
 
"green screen" could be a lot of different things. Having some experience with folks who like to run this sort of stuff in modern environments I can say in most cases you will find its now connected to the network and end users connect to it via a terminal emulator of some sort rather than through a directly connected terminal. Depending on the specific mainframe solution being utilized there are probably data conversion solutions already built into the emulator packages the customer is currently utilizing.
 
@MrGoat

I hope so too. :) During my research I found this. I assume this is the sort of thing you're talking about?
 
You already said it, but middleware is the keyword you're looking for.

I'd search for middleware and either the type of system you're looking to come from or the name of the software running on it.

Unless the software on the system is common, the chance you're going to need something custom programmed is high.
 
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