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Selecting the Product
Your biggest decision is going to be 'which product should I use?' There are pros and cons for any product you select. Let us identify some of the strengths and key considerations for the various products to help you decide what is most important in your environment.
Key Strengths
- Mature, high-function 5250 emulator that includes many productivity aids such as keyboard mapping, special support for Field Exit key, support of EHLLAPI interface.
- Printer emulation allows a network printer to be designated as an i5/OS output queue so that printer output can be automatically sent and printed.
- Contains middleware that is necessary if you wish to run PC applications to access the System i. For example, any Windows application that requires an ODBC driver, an OLE DB provider, or .NET provider.
- The Data Transfer (upload/download) function provides the ability to run complex queries to DB2 for i and also enables an administrator to set up batch transfer requests that can be scheduled to run without user intervention.
- The System i Navigator, packaged in this Client, provide System i administrators with many system management capabilities that are not available anywhere else.
- Program runs on the PC, thus reducing the i5/OS resource overhead.
Considerations for Deploying
- The program has to be installed and configured on a PC with Microsoft Windows operating system installed.
- The Microsoft operating systems supported in each System i Access release change to stay in step with Microsoft as they add new and drop old operating systems.
- Since the code is running on the network PC, remote Help Desk support can be more difficult; and may require a trip to the user desktop.
- Multiple ports need to be open in your System i firewall if remote users were attempting to connect over the Internet. Native desktop solutions are better targeted for an intranet environment where having many ports open is not such a security risk.
Key Strengths
- Nothing to deploy, install, or configure at the user desktop.
- Can be used with most any browser and any desktop operating system.
- Help Desk support is simplified as System i Access for Web runs entirely on System i.
- Provides tight control, based on i5/OS user profiles, for what functions of the product users can access.
- Provides many GUIs and wizards to work with System i resources, end users with little knowledge of i5/OS can quickly be productive with these interfaces.
- Enables you to maximize the usage of System i resources as it provides easy access to the file system, printer output, database, and host applications (RPG, etc).
- The upload/download database function enables you to quickly build requests and make available to end users. Can also import previously built requests from DB2 Query Manager (5722-ST1) and IBM Query for System i (5722-QU1) products, and make them available to run from a browser.
- Ideal for Internet connectivity as communication with the browser user is through the HTTP Server which requires only a single port to be open to the network.
Considerations for Deploying
- The program has to be installed, configured, and run on a web application server on System i. Thus, a System i needs to have IBM HTTP Server for i and either ASF Tomcat or WebSphere Application Server (or Portlet) products installed on the system.
- The 5250 emulation program does not provide many of the functions available in a native 5250 emulation program (such as keyboard remapping, special handling of certain keys like Field Exit, no EHLLAPI, etc).
- No "push" of printer output to a PC network printer (like Printer Emulation). Users must "pull" printer output to PC network printers through GUIs.
- No middleware for running desktop applications (like ODBC, .NET, etc)
- System i Navigator for Wireless
- IBM Toolbox for Java 2 Micro Edition
Key Strengths of System i Navigator for Wireless
- Nothing to deploy, install, or configure at the user desktop.
- Supports a variety of handheld wireless devices that have a browser
- Has been designed to reduce footprint to some System i system management functions so they can be accessed from a wireless device
- Help Desk support is simplified as it runs entirely on System i.
- Ideal for Internet connectivity as communication with the browser user is through the HTTP Server which requires only a single port to be open to the network.
Considerations for Deploying System i Navigator for Wireless
- The program has to be installed, configured, and run on a web application server on System i. Thus, a System i needs to have IBM HTTP Server for i and either ASF Tomcat or WebSphere Application Server products installed on the system.
- Not a full-function connectivity product, for example, no 5250, provides a subset of System i Navigator functions
- Supports a limited set of handheld devices
Key Strengths of IBM Toolbox for Java 2 Micro Edition
- Enables an application developer building an application for a handheld device to easily access System ii resources through the Java Toolbox interfaces
- Supports a variety of handheld wireless devices that have a browser
- Nothing to install on System ii as product is installed in the JVM on the handheld device.
Considerations for Deploying IBM Toolbox for Java 2 Micro Edition
- The program has to be installed, configured, and run in the JVM on the handheld device.
- JVM on handheld device must be at certain release levels.
- Not a full-function connectivity product, for example, no 5250.
- Supports a limited set of handheld devices
- Certain ports would need to be open in the System i firewall to access the database, etc.
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