Introduction
The Host Access Transformation Services (HATS) Toolkit offers many tools for creating and customizing Web HATS applications that provide an easy-to-use graphical user interface (GUI) for your character-based 3270 or 5250 host applications. HATS Web applications, including portlets can be developed with a look and feel that matches your company's Web or portal pages, and your users can access them through their Web browsers. HATS can also be used to create service-oriented architecture (SOA) assets from logic contained in your character based 3270, 5250, or VT applications.
Service-Oriented Architecture expresses a perspective of software architecture that defines the use of loosely coupled software services to support the requirements of the business processes and software users. In an SOA environment, resources on a network are made available as independent services that can be accessed without knowledge of their underlying platform implementation.
SOA can also be regarded as a style of Information Systems architecture that enables the creation of applications that are built by combining loosely coupled and interoperable services. These services operate together based on a formal definition or contract (for example, WSDL) that is independent of the underlying platform and programming language. The interface definition hides the implementation of the language-specific service. SOA-compliant systems can therefore be independent of development technologies and platforms (such as Java™ and .NET). For example, services written in C# running on .NET platforms and services written in Java™ running on Java™ EE platforms can both be consumed by a common composite application. In addition, applications running on either platform can consume services running on the other as Web services, which facilitates reuse. SOA can support integration and consolidation activities within complex enterprise systems, but SOA does not specify or provide a methodology or framework for documenting capabilities or services.
- How HATS processes host screens
- Creating a transformation using components and widgets
- Events and actions
- Using global variables
- Recording a macro
- Creating an Integration Object from a macro
If you are not already familiar with any of these topics, refer to the information about them in HATS User's and Administrator's Guide so that you will have the necessary background to make good use of the information in this book. You should also be familiar with using Rational® SDP to create Java™ EE applications.
- Add business logic classes to be invoked as an action when an event occurs. You can also create custom logic to aid in recognizing host screens. See Adding business logic for more information.
- Add new host components or widgets to be used in transformations by extending the existing host components and widgets. See Creating custom components and widgets for more information.
- Perform several programming tasks with Integration Objects.
- Make one or more Integration Objects available as a Web service, which makes the objects available for use by other applications.
- Create your own plug-ins for Web Express™ Logon.
- Enhance the capabilities of your HATS portlets.
- Use the HATS bidirectional API to work with the orientation of screen elements in applications that use bidirectional code pages. See Using the HATS bidirectional API for more information.
When enhancing your applications, you might find that you need to edit some of the Java™ source files. Information provided in the section of the Rational® Software Delivery Platform help titled Developing Java™ applications can help you with this task.