The Rocket Software team is pleased to announce that a new version of Rocket® Terminal Emulator (Web and Desktop Edition) is now available.
Rocket® Terminal Emulator provides secure access to IBM Z®, IBM® i, and VT applications. The Web Edition is a browser-based emulation for any PC, tablet, or mobile device, whereas the Desktop Edition provides cost-efficient access to terminal-based applications from the desktop. Rocket® Terminal Emulation also runs within the Zowe® framework.
Rocket® Terminal Emulator (Web Edition)
There is a clear trend that customers want to use their Terminal Emulation software in environments that provide easy deployment and flexible clustering solutions.
With the new version 10.2.1 of Rocket® Terminal Emulator (Web Edition) we will not only provide standardized Docker containers, but we also support Amazon Web Services (AWS) with the deployment to Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Services (EKS), including up- and downscale functionality.
In production environments, upgrading the software in the cluster to a new version needs particular concepts; Rocket supports this by following the blue/green deployment strategy.
The stability of the existing Clustering technology in Rocket® Terminal Emulator (Web Edition) has been improved and provides better analytics information to identify and solve data conflicts.
Besides the AWS and Docker support, there are other new features that our customers will benefit from, such as:
· Printing for IBM i (5250) sessions – a printer session can be defined, and all print output will be redirected to the printer session. The outputs can be provided as PDFs or redirected to a physical printer.
· User Input History – users can reuse commands and data entries already entered in 3270 and 5250 sessions.
· UI for administrative settings – a new UI for the advanced configuration and server logging settings provides data validation and eliminates the need to adjust JSON files.
· New Upgrade Tool – a new command line upgrade tool automates the upgrade to new versions and replaces eight (8) manual steps, including upgrading the data settings.
Several enhancements based on customers’ feedback around security, performance, usability, scripting, and administration can be reviewed in detail, together with the resolved issues in the Rocket TE Web Edition V10.2.1 release notes (rocketsoftware.com).
Rocket® Terminal Emulator (Desktop Edition)
The UI of the Green Screen applications has not changed much in the last decades – even more critical to improving the user experience of the Terminal Emulator software.
These are some of the improvements that are available in Rocket® Terminal Emulator (Desktop Edition) 10.2.1:
· Better support of multiple monitors – open sessions can be moved to a new Terminal Emulator Window that contains the complete menu and button bars. Sessions can be moved between the open Windows, and there is a comfortable way to switch between them. Given the improvements in Windows 11 arranging open Windows, users can manage the Terminal Emulation experience to their specific needs.
· List of previous connections – especially administrators who must manage a long list of hosts will welcome the option to see and access all previous connections.
· UI Modernization – more icons and views have been adjusted to the new modern design.
· Hostfront script conversion – existing scripts from Rocket’s Hostfront Terminal Emulator can be converted to Visual Basic scripts and reused in Rocket® Terminal Emulator (Desktop Edition)
· Define screens for data masking – text in screens like titles or descriptions can be used to identify screens that require data masking for a more flexible definition. The rules can be set in the Web Deployment Manager.
· Enhanced MFA support in Web Deployment Manager – with the support of standard time-based one-time passwords (TOTP) for multi-factor authentication, customers have the flexibility to choose their favorite OTP App like Microsoft Authenticator or Google Authenticator to provide higher security to their end-users.
Detailed release notes can be found in the Rocket Terminal Emulator Desktop and Web Edition V10.2.1 release notes (rocketsoftware.com), and adjusted guides can be found for Rocket® Terminal Emulator (Web Edition) in the Library (rocketsoftware.com) and for Rocket® Terminal Emulator (Desktop Edition) in the Library (rocketsoftware.com).