Many sites have successfully used the 3270 Bridge for Web-enabling CICS applications. Relative to other Web-enabling options, using the 3270 Bridge requires minimal programming effort to move large numbers of CICS applications to an intranet, extranet, or the Internet. The 3270 Bridge creates its own HTML and uses IBM's CICS Web Support (CWS) as its extension to the Web, providing a single-server solution without additional software or hardware. For applications in which the Web appearance is less important than quick availability, using the 3270 Bridge is a practical and effective solution.

How WebTek works with the 3270 Bridge

The 3270 Bridge automatically generates HTML from both mapped and non-mapped 3270 applications without requiring changes to the applications. WebTek assists by providing a presentation management tool known as Theme Manager. Theme Manager can drastically improve the presentation of the HTML generated by the 3270 Bridge by merging it with the HTML that you or your Web developers create. Theme Manager also provides rules to allow customization of the interface based on applications or users. Also for bridge users, WebTek provides the Doctemplate utility for managing the HTML templates generated by the bridge, the URL Control Table (UCT) for URL management, and the File Transfer utility for uploading and serving Web-based files (GIF, JPEG, CSS, etc.).