Screen scraping a 3270 terminal?

[Terrence Enger]

On Jan 9, 2008 12:50 PM, Aaron Vegh <aaronvegh-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Hi there,
> I have a client who wants me to scrape information from a number of
> web-located resources (they're all internal to their network). That's
> doable, but among the resources are two 3270 terminal sessions that
> have to be logged into, navigated through and then scraped.
> 
> My normal procedure is to use curl to snatch and parse HTML from a
> site, and it will suffice for the rest of the job. But how does one
> programmatically parse through an old green screen application?

First of all, not by parsing the data stream if you have any choice in
the matter: that's a hefty manual, if memory serves.  And after you pick
it up, you have to *read* the manual <grin />.

What terminal emulation software is in place?  Many emulation packages
offer programmed access to the "display" and "keyboard".

( I have used IBM Personal Communications in its incarnation as iSeries
Access for this in the past.  Interfaces are available for C++,
Javascript, and VB; my familiarity is with the C++ interface.  If
Personal Communications happens to be your product, I shall try to
answer questions here. )

> 
> I found a vendor called Jagacy (jagacy.com) that provides a Java-based
> solution, but it seems to be GUI based... and I'm not that good with
> Java anyway.
> 
> Any other thoughts would be appreciated.

Screen-scraping becomes attractive if it is significantly easier to
navigate through the screens of the application programs than to query
the underlying database.  Does this in fact describe your situation?

> 
> Cheers!
> Aaron.
> 

Terry,
rent-a-geek and database bithead.



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