Patent ID: 9715399
Date: 2017-07-25
CPC Classifications: G06F,H04L

Claim:
1. A data processing system comprising: at least one processor; and a mainframe injection component (MIC) configured to manipulate some data packets within a data stream communicated between at least one emulator and at least one mainframe to enhance the at least one mainframe and cause the at least one mainframe to provide a service-oriented architecture without replacing the software running on the at least one emulator and without modifying an application running on the mainframe, wherein the MIC is separate from and interposed between the at least one emulator and the at least one mainframe, and comprises a packet processor that, under control of the at least one processor, is configured to provide functionality comprising: receiving data packets communicated between the at least one emulator and the at least one mainframe, wherein the received data packets include data packets transmitted from the at least one emulator to the at least one mainframe and data packets transmitted from the at least one mainframe to the at least one emulator, and wherein the received data packets comprise a mainframe screen requested by a user of the at least one emulator for display on the at least one emulator, and at least one of the received data packets comprises user credentials entered on one of the at least one emulators; accessing design-time defined processing instructions that instruct the MIC in processing at runtime incoming data packets, and accessing design-time defined processing rules that identify which of the processing instructions are to be applied to which of the received data packets, wherein one or more of the accessed design-time defined processing instructions instruct the MIC to modify a data packet to change content of one or more fields of the mainframe screen displayed on the emulator(s), and one or more of the accessed design-time defined processing instructions instruct the MIC to modify a data packet to change a visual attribute of the mainframe screen displayed on the emulator(s); retrieving, based on the user credentials included in at least one of the received data packets, one or more user roles from at least one external data provider; and for each of the received data packets: for each of the data packets identified as needing manipulation: wherein the modified data packets injected into the data stream include changes to content of one or more fields of the mainframe screen displayed on the emulator(s) and changes to visual attributes of the mainframe screen displayed on the emulator(s), responsive to the applied one or more design-time defined processing instructions.