Auto capture of screenshots in Mainframe ???

Balamurugan3 · New User Joined: 02 Sep 2009 Posts: 14 Location: chennai

Is there any options like auto capture of screenshots in mainframe????? i am in testing team... I need to take each n every page i navigate through online screens in mainframe... Its taking lot of time... Is there any options like auto cappture of screenshots and saving them in a dataset or anything like that......... It would b more helpful. ...

Many thanks.........
Bala.

enrico-sorichetti · Posted: Mon Jan 18, 2010 5:30 pm

there are tools to do what You ask for, but they are not free!

Marso · Posted: Mon Jan 18, 2010 8:55 pm

For all my screenshots, I use freeware program "Gadwin PrintScreen".
There is no auto-capture, but you can configure it so screenshots are saved to disk with automatic naming.
Very user friendly and, as I said, free for personal use.

MBabu · Posted: Mon Jan 18, 2010 10:17 pm

suggest
IrfanView for Windows (edit with window/screen cap, auto naming, etc)

ISPFHTML for mainframe ISPF screens to generate HTML or RTF (both generally smaller than images)

Craq Giegerich · Posted: Mon Jan 18, 2010 10:32 pm

CAPTUREZE from Application Techniques, Inc. Its not automatic you have to press the Printscreen Key.

OwenHarding · New User Joined: 22 Dec 2009 Posts: 1 Location: Toronto

If you Extra x-treme as your PC to host communication there is a record feature.
I can't quickly figure out how to save it to a format that is portable to a document. It saves the info with a .HST extention, which requires Extra to open.
However it does allow you to save the screens automatically.

I tried using this feature in hopes of using the screens captured in a document, but had no luck.

Since you are in testing, it may be useful to capture tests, if paper copies are not required. Or you can screen capture the test at a later time.

Bill O'Boyle · Posted: Thu Jan 21, 2010 4:01 am

I wrote a prehistoric version of this (in CICS/Assembler) some 20+ years ago, using a request screen together with a CICS "preemptive" transaction. Because it catered to a CICS version/release which did not offer the INQUIRE API to get the next posted transid against a given terminal, I had to address the TCTTE to get this information. Hence, the need for Assembler.

You would determine the user's terminal-id and internally START this preemptive transaction against it.

This transaction would issue a RECEIVE BUFFER, write the terminal BUFFER contents to a TSQ, then terminate the task, using the EIBCALEN from DFHEIBLK along with the next posted transid. If there wasn't any, then a normal RETURN is issued.

Control was then returned to the request screen, prompting you to press <Enter> and view the captured buffer via a READQ TS. With a little ingenuity, this TSQ could be written to a file.

The trick was that the target task/terminal must have previously issued a RETURN and posted the next transaction against this terminal (normal stuff).

If you're interested, I'll try to dig up the code. But, if I can't find it, the concept is easy enough to be written in CICS/COBOL.

Bill

MBabu · Posted: Thu Jan 21, 2010 4:07 am

If you are familiar with 3270 data streams, you can also use the diagnostic trace function of your terminal emulator and reconstruct the screens from the 3270 buffer traces. I had to do that many years ago to create a test tool that would record and play back screens. Not a trivial exercise though. I assume that there are other ways to record 3270 data streams (comm server traces, telnet proxies designed for this, etc). Not worth the effort for just creating a document though.

srloui · New User Joined: 06 Jan 2009 Posts: 3 Location: Chennai

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