Category: GREEN SCREEN TESTING

Modern Test Automation for Legacy Applications

12/14/2018

Published in "The Connection" magazine, Nov/Dec 2018

Green Screen, in 2018, seriously?

It's hard to say what is most surprising. To be sitting in the last throes of 2018, writing an article about green screen applications. Or to have recently found myself deep in the bowels of 3270 and 6530 terminal data streams writing code to automate the testing of them. More accurately, that should really read 'porting code' - since my firm, Ascert, has had a TAL screen handling and testing library since I first joined (and worked on it) back in 1997. Even then, I think most of us assumed it was the last chance saloon for a technology that would soon go the way of the dinosaurs, disco, and flares. But time and the future makes fools of us all I guess. Especially those whose predictions of the death of the mainframe have proved somewhere between premature and wildly inaccurate.

At least the cause of this peculiar turn of events is simple to explain – a customer needed it. Rather less easy to explain is why this wasn't just one isolated customer, but a steady stream of requests from different sources over a period of months. Having barely had a single conversation over testing this style of application for the last 20 years, all of a sudden it was a hotter topic than contactless EMV testing, or Open Banking APIs. Being more of a practitioner than an analyst though, I parked my curiosity as to this resurgent interest and got on with the far more solvable task of understanding what was required and cracking on with delivering it. In so doing, I unwittingly uncovered some pieces that could help explain what was going on...

Click on the image to read the entire article written by Rob Walker

Read the entire article.

Ascert Releases Automated Testing Solution for Green Screen Legacy Systems

12/28/2016

Building on Ascert’s growing suite of automated testing tools, the company releases its Virtual Terminal Simulation Module for VersaTest Automator

As an innovator in test automation, Ascert has launched a new version of its Virtual Terminal Simulation Module (VTERM) to operate natively in its newest generation of testing products, VersaTest Automator. The VTERM product, which was originaly created within Ascert’s VersaTest Classic product, has been used successfully by customers for many years to automate the test process for green screen applications.However that version required an HP NonStop (formerly Tandem) server, in order to operate – that is no longer the case.

This latest version leverages the end-to-end testing environment provided by VersaTest Automator, enabling the coordinated testing of green screen applications alongside other headless interfaces, such as payments networks and back-end hosts. Adoption of this latest version has occurred with companies in various sectors including financial services and retail.

“Many of today's server-based applications are developed to utilize the sophisticated graphical capabilities of PC's or workstations for user input and display. But, in many instances, the ‘behind the scenes’ applications in very large companies are legacy green screen applications based on older terminal technology, such as the Tandem 6530 or IBM 3270", said Paul Springston, Ascert’s Director of Professional Services. “VTERM eliminates the manually intensive process of testing these interfaces and automates the process. Our customers who have implemented VTERM have been able to recognize significant reductions in testing time almost immediately. This latest version, operating natively within a VersaTest Automator environment, provides them with even greater orchestration capabilities for their complex testing environments."

VTERM Terminal Simulator, and add-on module to VersaTest Automator, provides yet another solution to the problem of expensive, time consuming and error-prone testing practices. It is joined by the VersaTest Jenkins Plug-in for Continuous Testing which Ascert recently released to the marketplace.

To find out more about VTERM or other Ascert testing technologies, contact us.

Modern Test Automation for Legacy Applications

Ascert Releases Automated Testing Solution for Green Screen Legacy Systems

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