Despite what we wrote last month, IBM continues to sell and support the WebFacing Tool as part of the Host Integration Solution (HIS) for 5250 Applications. This article will hopefully set things straight as to what IBM has done with the development tools included within the HIS suite. IT Jungle apologizes for any fear or uncertainty it may have caused loyal System i customers and WebFacing users as a result of its misunderstanding of IBM's announcement.

Instead of ending support for new WebFacing development, as we erroneously wrote in the July 15 story, what IBM has done is restricted the use of the version of Rational Developer for System i (RDi) that's included with HIS version 7.1 (called RDi for SOA Construction) to only support Host Access Transformation Services (HATS)-related development. Because WebFacing remains part of HATS, (as it has been for more than two years), WebFacing lives on.