Help/suggestions/ideas TN3270 screen scraping & 3270 protocol

[hoser]

Hi all.

I am new around here. Have done a lot of scripting in my past life as a Unix Sysadmin but I now need help getting up to speed on the Windows side.

At the same time, I have been wanting to automate some tasks at work that are boring, repetitive and error prone. We use a TN3270 terminal to interface with the mainframe so I have done some macros with the 3270 program we have but I need more (read from file, perform some operations, etc) and with AutoIt I could even create a nice GUI I am thinking.

Can anybody please give me a generic idea of how the screen scraping would be done? I know AutoIt can simulate ky strokes but I wonder if I would have to use DDE or COM (which I don't know) or I can keep it simple and just read/write ascii from the terminal, etc.

Also, how about getting rid of the 3270 program we have and doing the 3270 communication myself?

Maybe it would be too much trouble to implement 3270 with Autoit? but I was thinking maybe using CYGWIN 3270? So then I wonder if there would be a batter, faster way to communicate back and forth if I went that route?

Any ideas, opinions and help welcome.

Thanks.

J.

[nfwu]

http://sourceforge.net/projects/freehost3270

http://www.h3270.org/

http://x3270.bgp.nu/

Not sure exactly what you want though.

If you would like to implement it yourself:

Look at some source code: http://x3270.bgp.nu/download.html

Protocol Info (nt very helpful): click here

You'll also have to lookup the telnet protocol: http://www.networksorcery.com/enp/protocol/telnet.htm

You could use AutoIt to interface with your current 3270 application and automate it, reading text on screen, automating keystokes and control msgs.

Grab a look at the AutoIt Window Info utility (info on the info util is in the AutoIt helpfile).

And maybe take a peek at AutoIt 1-2-3 (look in my signature vv down there.)

And remember one thing: the AutoIt helpfile is your friend. =)

#)