Client Server Technologies Ltd last week introduced Jacada, a system to enable the generation of Java clients for mainframe and midrange system without changing the legacy systems. It uses CST’s rules-based Knowledgebase engine to automatically update clients as changes are made to the host applications. The rules are changed and regenerate the Java clients. Other tools cannot do this says CST and this means that each client has to be regenerated individually. The CST technology works independent of HTTP HyperText Transfer Protocol, browsers and Web servers, and this is crucial, says the company because by connecting to the host through dedicated TCP/IP sockets through the Jacada server, the persistent state is maintained. Browsers on their own are not right for on-line transaction processing work as they are stateless. CST says that Jacada works seamlessly with its other two products, GUISysy and VB Sys, and Windows or Visual Basic clients can be regenerated as Java clients using Jacada. CST brought together nine vendors who are all IBM Corp partners: ActionWare Inc, Ceridian Corp, CheckFree Software Corp, Computer Associates Inc Acacia division, Friedman Corp, Infinium Software Corp, Marcam Pace Financial and Synon Corp to show off their Java-enabled applications running on IBM Network Stations at last week’s Internet Expo in San Jose, California. Jacada costs $20,000 for 40 concurrent sessions for Windows 95 and Windows NT. CST’s software development kit for Jacada goes for $17,000. Jacada is available on Windows 95 and Windows NT now; IBM AS/400 and S/390 versions are scheduled to be released later this year, which begs the question why it wasn’t done first. Support for the Solaris operating system is due out by the end of the year.
