Serving the fast paced financial services industry, our character
based (legacy) application was looking dated compared to most of our
competition. Also, newer prospects demanded a Windows® GUI interface
to even be considered as a viable vendor.
Our staff devoted considerable time searching for a product that would
allow us to provide a Windows GUI ‘front end’ to our application that
would not require us to rewrite our code. We studied several terminal
emulators that claim to provide screen revamping (none of them had
any sparkle and looked like an interim step) and we even looked very
favorably towards providing a browser based interface. But this too
had some serious shortcomings.
Quite by chance one day while looking through a technical magazine
(the Perl Journal) I came across a very small advertisement for a
product called WinFAST that claimed to provide a GUI interface
for legacy systems. Immediately I contacted the company via the Internet
and the very next day I received my trial program CD-ROM. Without
hesitation I quickly installed the evaluation and began my investigation
into the claims of this product.
What I saw was quite promising. The product achieves its marvel by
emulating a terminal to the host computer but it scans the screen
images and, based on my own definitions, identifies strings and values
and dynamically generates a true 32-bit Windows GUI panel. The results
are astounding. The screens look just like Windows because they are
Windows. They work just like Windows because they are Windows. They
even allow the dynamic generation of drop down lists allowing the
user to select items. You can define the colors, the font style, the
width of the borders, etc., etc., etc. Without doubt I had finally
found the product we needed.
As with all new implementations there was a learning curve. However,
if one wishes to use the screen defaults it is entirely possible to
provide a Windows GUI front end to your application in less than one
working day. Imagine, not months or even weeks to rewrite user interfaces;
just a day! However, once we became comfortable with the workings
of the WinFAST product we decided to take advantage of all that
it could do. We began adding minor enhancements to our applications
that would be interpreted by WinFAST to dynamically generate
even more features. Features like menus, function buttons, page buttons,
scrolling lists and more.
And of equal importance was the technical support we experienced for
this product. Questions were answered very quickly and suggestions
were made as to how we could accomplish various things. The technical
staff was always attentive, they know their product and they stand
behind it. It is a rare combination these days when one can obtain
a product as robust as WinFAST AND have the support to back
it up.
800-491-0734
or 603-447-8406 (Int'l)
43 Washington Street , Conway, NH 03818