Although Intranets have the potential to redefine corporate information systems, most Intranets today primarily deliver static
information in HTML, that is, stored on Web Servers. The rapid and constant rise of corporate demands for more useful information
has fueled interest in Web-to-Host application integration solutions. Those solutions include HostFront's Host Application
Integration Toolkit, which allows organizations to publish host data stored on IBMs AS/400 or Mainframes machines onto the
Web using HTML. By linking the Web site directly to the host, HostFront's Toolkit can be used to transform a company's web
site from a simple on-line brochure into an integral component of its E-Business strategy.
The Host Application Integration Toolkit allows you to draw information from several different host applications at once and
then present it in HTML in a Web browser or within a customized application. This, as illustrated in the diagram below, is
accomplished by allowing additional business logic to be incorporated within the middle-tier of HostFront Server. This Toolkit
is designed to help you easily transform any static Web content into dynamic and fully transactional Web applications.
Figure 1: Host Application Integration Toolkit components
The Host Application Integration can be used to achieve the following capabilities:
|
• |
Automate and simplify the process of accessing legacy host systems |
|
• |
Redesign the user interface of legacy applications |
|
• |
Add an additional layer of business logic (i.e. middleware) without modifying existing host applications |
|
• |
Build B2B connectors or adapters for IBM AS/400 and Mainframe terminal based applications |
|
• |
Improve security by not allowing users to directly access host applications, but rather only the middleware that governs the
information to which users are entitled
|