November 2003

Reflection integrates new Microsoft tech

Host access solution brings Group features to 3000 sites

In a marketplace that last month looked like it was being defined by endings, WRQ arrived with new functionality for the HP 3000 customer — a group the company continues to describe as a vital segment of its business.

WRQ’s Version 11.0 of Reflection for HP and Version 6.0 of Reflection for the Web add support for Windows Group Policy and the Microsoft Office XP Web Services Toolkit. WRQ said that the new software is offering the industry’s only secure access to HP 3000 applications that use NS/VT.

Those Group Policies are a new feature of Windows, something that WRQ product manager Donovan Deakin said even small to midsize HP 3000 shops will want to employ. “We’re the first host access provider to support Group Policies,” he said. Sites can deploy varied levels of Reflection functionality based on Group Policies.

Reid Larson, a developer at WRQ, delivered an example of “secure connections only company-wide, but people in IT connections could make non-secure connections, to make exceptions.” Prior versions of Reflection could have customized installations of the product. The new support makes it easier to customize functionality while keeping the versions of the software uniform.

“It allows IT departments to dynamically reconfigure Reflection,” Larson said. “The driving factor in Group Policies is securing the desktops, to lock them down as tightly as possible. The Policy controls system facilities.”

Many HP 3000 sites use applications with NS/VT protocol, and now the new versions of Reflection give these applications SSL/TLS security. Version 10.0 could make these connections with a proxy server; 11.0 makes managing and deploying such secure sessions easier by using the product’s management server for Reflection setting files. A secure token authorization feature is now available to 11.0 HP 3000 customers who don’t want to deploy a proxy server.

WRQ also added an automated Linux installer for Reflection for the Web 6.0.

The new Reflection products will connect text off HP 3000 application screens with e-mail clients and Web browsers. Users highlight the address they want to use and then right-click to send the information to a client or browser. Reflection recognizes the address as e-mail or Web data.

Administrators will get better support for the configuration files, since the new version of the product will import as well as export the files.

WRQ added triple-DES encryption in the product, supporting Kerberos servers that are hosted on non-3000 systems such as Unix boxes.

The products can now consume Office for XP Web Services using an included toolkit. Customers will have to do some programming to employ the feature. For example, an HP 3000 application might allow a customer to type in a name and address, and a button created with Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) can grab the address off the application’s screen and verify it against a Web-based database at the US Postal Service. Reflection ships with VBA included.

“If you’re doing mail order and you get an address, you can get instant verification that it’s a valid address,” Larson said. “Microsoft has extended VBA to bring in the Web Services capability.” Developers only need to be familiar with Visual Basic to access the service. WRQ’s Consulting Services Group will also be able to customize Reflection to use Web Services.

Reflection for the Web now fully integrates NS/VT protocols with PlumTree or BEA Weblogic portals. Version 6.0 also fixes key mapping issues that have been “inherent to Java 1.4,” Deakin said. “One of the common complaints that HP 3000 sites had was they couldn’t map the Return and Enter keys separately like they could with our Windows product. That problem goes away, and we’ll continue to innovate the product with Java.”

Customers on current support contracts will get the upgraded versions of the WRQ products without any additional charge.