RP/Web

The shortest path between your mainframe and the Web.
 

	Leverages mainframe/legacy investments Provides quick, powerful, scalable results. Utilizes existing hardware and staff. Minimizes the cost of mainframe access. Adds security to Web-enabled environments. Includes a powerful development platform. Meets departmental and enterprise-wide requirements. Adapts quickly to changing business needs.

UltraQuest and RP/Web are among IBM's Best Kept Secrets about e-business on VM. Check out the first white paper ... you'll find us in "Secret number 2: e-business Building Blocks" and again in "Secret number 8: The Rest of the Story". Number 8 is a list of sample vendors and software for e-business, where we are one of 14 vendors chosen. Select Business Solutions is also listed explicitly on the page itself, in the section titled "Web-enabling VM applications". 

RP/Web was awarded the Government Technology Conference's Best Solution award developed for Motorola Inc.

RP/Web - The Perfect Blend

Corporate intranets have quickly become one of the most vital components of a successful business infrastructure. To remain competitive, you have to take advantage of Web technology. Yet, even as intranet technology matures, more and more IS professionals are finding that many of the basic challenges still remain. 

You've been here before. Business units need local, decentralized, departmental systems to maximize productivity. Budgets are limited and evolving technologies are often unproven. The expense of moving mainframe applications or data to other platforms can be prohibitive, and may not even make sense. After all, most mission-critical applications remain on the mainframe because only that platform can provide the reliability, security, and computing power needed to make them effective. 

RP/Web Includes Four Key Components:
 

	A connection to host data and applications through a mainframe-based Web server. The Durable Server Facility (DSF), a configurable resource manager to accommodate high-volume traffic and reduce the cost of mainframe access. It manages pools of permanently active application servers, under native MVS, to significantly reduce CGI overhead. Reusable Execution Spaces with robust tools for the testing, tuning, and tracking of connections against mainframe resources. A robust scripting, reporting, and development environment for CGIs. It offers the power of Select's 4GL, native data access, and performance-enhancing features such as smart file caching, lookup tables, and full-track I/O.

 

	The RP/Web DSF Advantage

Each CGI transaction requires the startup and shutdown of an address space (or subtask) and associated allocation of resources.  Typically, each CGI executes in its own address space and cannot share resources with others. The development process for CGIs is difficult. To test a CGI, it must be executed within a dynamic Web environment, which prevents interactive debugging.  CGI performance is difficult to monitor.

CGI address spaces and assigned resources (such as datasets and databases) are reusable between transaction. This reduces CPU usage and provides users with substantially quicker response time.  CGIs may be grouped by function or usage to share address spaces and resources. This further reduces CPU usage and provides users with faster access.  RP/Web's robust test tools allow debugging in a simulated Web environment with full access to the code under test. This enables in-process scanning and debugging to drastically reduce development and testing time.  RP/Web provides for the efficient monitoring of CGI performance at detailed or summary levels. This permits CGIs to be turned to decrease resource usage and deliver quicker response time.

The goal isn't to run the corporate intranet from your mainframe, but to make the most of your investment in those legacy systems - to leverage your existing staff and systems as much as possible while enjoying the cost-reduction benefits of the intranet revolution. And also, to avoid short-term solutions that may turn out to be dead ends when the time comes to scale up, or when business needs change. 

If these are the issues you're facing now, you'll find RP/Web to be the blend of power, efficiency, dependability, and versatility you need. 

RP/Web's architecture and features allow you to make the best use of existing mainframe resources, rapidly customize implementations to respond to major business initiatives, and ensure that you get increased value as you scale up or redevelop in the future. No matter what your criteria, RP/Web is the shortest path to success. 

Economy and Efficiency

The expense of corporate intranets can sneak up on you. Small, departmental solutions can often "fly below radar," but soon they become popular and require integration with other systems. 

As an enterprise-wide solution, RP/Web saves the cost of multiple departmental implementations. Instead of needing a cadre of tools, you can buy one tool that "plays well with others," for everyone to use, eliminating the need to integrate multiple solutions. 

RP/Web is one of the best long-term investments you can make. Unlike three-tiered solutions, no additional expenditures are required to get an application up and running, and no additional purchases are required to scale your systems upward. 

RP/Web completely eliminates the need for 3270 transactions, significantly reducing the CPU costs of existing applications. It's a savings not possible under screen-scraping approaches. And it's a proposition to consider if you're going to scale up, or if your mainframe is already nearing capacity. Additionally, RP/Web's unique DSF architecture ensures that additional CPU resources are not wasted every time a CGI is run. If you're considering approaches that translate "business rules," you'll find RP/Web simple and more powerful on top of reducing costs. 

Worried about the incidental costs from implementing all this new technology? With RP/Web you don't have to reinvent the wheel. It allows you to leverage your existing mainframe expertise right now, while exploring these new technologies. This reduces the incidental costs of retraining and staff downtime while easing the task of transitioning to a new environment. 

Other solutions may run out of steam and need to be replaced down the road, but RP/Web is flexible enough to handle simple "chroming" operations now, and full-fledged application development and integration in the future. 

RP/Web can be used with multiple mainframe Web servers, including Beyond Software's EnterpriseWeb and IBM's Domino Go Webserver (formerly ICSS), without redesign, if you switch or decide to use more than one. Applications are also portable between VM and MVS. 

Power, Simplicity, Scalability

RP/Web is simple to install, use, and maintain. You only have to install a single set of software on a single platform, no matter how many different ways you plan to use it. It's the simplest configuration possible and can be done without sacrificing power or scalability. 

One of the reasons most mission-critical applications still reside on the mainframe is that the mainframe delivers where other platforms fall short. Scaling a three-tiered application to include several thousand additional users can be a long, time-consuming, and expensive process. With RP/Web, it's no problem. By leveraging your intranet, you can easily scale to tens of thousands of users, with no additional purchases or manpower required. 

In addition, the RP/Web scripting and application development environment incorporates Select's 4GL, providing you with a powerful, time-tested, proven engine to access data. 

You can construct everything from simple scripts to major applications in less time and with less code than with any other mainframe solution. You can access data using SQL, or leverage robust interfaces to many data sources - VSAM, DB2, IMS, etc. - using one standard syntax with more power and functionality than SQL would give you by itself. 

RP/Web's Durable Server Facility (DSF) architecture allows you to easily segregate and control access to individual Web applications, even though all of them may go through the same logical server. 

Security and Stability

One of the inherent advantages of the mainframe is its unparalleled security. Still, it can be tricky to tie your mainframe to the corporate intranet without compromising your existing controls. RP/Web reinforces the power of mainframe security, while simplifying its application. RP/Web isolates the back-end CGI processing from the Web server, allowing for additional security and protecting the server from CGI failure. 

You can apply all the familiar mainframe security controls to any back-end process and group your CGIs according to the types of resources and security controls they need, independent of the server. Multiple types of security can easily be applied to groups of RP/Web CGIs, all organized for ease of maintenance. 

Flexibility

RP/Web allows you to construct custom modules for interfacing to any client or middleware tools that can communicate with a Web server. 

RP/Web Users Have Designed:

 

	Server-centric applications that use the browser strictly as a GUI client. Cooperative applications using Java or Visual Basic with HTTP as the communications medium. Distributed applications, tying together systems on platforms like UNIX, NT, and VM into a seamless interface.

Getting Started

RP/Web is available with a built-in Web server, EnterpriseWeb/MVS, or as a plug-in for use with IBM's Domino Go Webserver (formerly ICSS), which comes with OS/390. 

Key Benefits and Features
 
CGI Connector

Interface to mainframe Web server. Just add a few lines to your server's configuration file and you're ready to go.
 

	Use RP/Web resources only as necessary. RP/Web doesn't interfere with or "take over" your Web server, so all the features of the server you've chosen are still available, along with the extended capabilities of RP/Web.

Under Domino Go
 

	WebServer, use either direct CGI calls or the GWAPI interface to invoke CGIs. Minimizes your footprint in the Web server's space.

Durable Server Facility
 

	Configure your CGIs to run in reusable address spaces, or as subtasks within one address space. Monitor and manage address space for maximum efficiency. Distribute your workload efficiently. Configure the dispatcher to group CGIs for maximum performance and ease of maintenance. Interface to existing resources with a minimum of hassle. Leverage your existing security.  If you're using Open Edition, access traditional MVS resources as they exist now, without messy conversion.

Tools
 

	Use the powerful 4GL to make scripting, development and data access a breeze.  Easily retrieve and set variables in HTML forms.  Generate dynamic and hybrid HTML.  Work with the server to use cookies, set MIME types, etc.  Use robust testing tools to ensure that everything works before staging to production, and easily trap problems when they occur.  Analyze and tune CGI performance independent of the server with performance monitoring tools.

Learn More

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