What's New in Reflection

If you've previously used Reflection or EXTRA! for product emulation, you'll find many new features in Reflection 2011. These features combine the best emulation features of Reflection and EXTRA! into a single solution, optimized for Microsoft Windows 7 and Microsoft Office 2010.

Following is a summary of the many new and enhanced user interface, productivity, management, and security features you'll find in Reflection.

User Interface

Reflection has the look-and-feel of Windows 7 and Microsoft Office 2010, including the Ribbon user interface, integrated search, and theme support. The workspace provides a multiple document interface, in which you can open multiple sessions as tabbed documents, or windows that you can tile or cascade.

Reflection allows you to view and interact with Web pages within the workspace via an integrated Internet Explorer control.

Productivity Tools

Tightly integrated with Microsoft Office, Reflection supports Productivity features such as Recent Typing, Scratch Pad, Auto Complete, Auto Expand, Spell Check, and Screen History to drive user efficiency. If Microsoft Office 2003 or later is installed, you can reuse host data in e-mail messages, contacts, appointments, notes, tasks, and word-processing documents.

Management

You can create and distribute customized 3270, 5250, and VT session documents that include host specifications, or add Web pages to your workspace or layout. Session documents include pointers to mouse maps, keyboard maps, theme files, hotspot files, and Ribbons that you can use to customize the behavior of the session. You can further customize each session by adding macros, scripts, executables, and other options to context menus.

You can connect to hosts that use IP version 6 addresses. And, you can specify a backup host to which Reflection automatically connects in case of connection failure or interruption.

License metering for Reflection 2011 is available through the optional Reflection Administrator or Reflection for the Web administrative consoles.

Security Services
Reflection provides the following security features for determining who can access and use sensitive host data.
- User Account Control (UAC) for Installation — Build Microsoft Installer (.msi) packages and lock down features.
- Online Certificate Revocation — When making secure connections, check the authenticity of certificates using Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP), a faster alternative to checking Certificate Trust Lists (CTL).
- Trusted Locations — Prevent security problems by opening documents only from trusted locations that you specify in the Trust Center.
- Expanded Privacy Filter Support — Filter out sensitive host data from screen history, screen capture and printing, Office integration, and more, using privacy filters that you tailor to suit your specific needs.

You can also reinforce mainframe security by adding a layer of protection in front of the host with secure token authorization.

Automation and Developer Support

Using the Reflection object-oriented API model, add functionality to terminal sessions and Web pages using authenticated .NET remote access, Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), and HLLAPI. You can also create and run VBA scripts using functions provided by the VBA development environment. Documentation for the .NET API and VBA are provided from the Help button on the workspace frame.

Layout files give you the ability to access the Reflection .NET API in multiple instances of Reflection simultaneously. API security settings allow you to control access to the application through API or macro calls.

Attachmate is deprecating support for remote API access through the TCP/IP channel. Reflection 2011 Service Pack 1 supports TCP/IP access for custom applications that are currently configured to use the TCP/IP channel but does not allow you to select or configure this channel. All support for TCP/IP access will be removed in Reflection 2011 Release 2.

Note: If you are using custom applications that access your Reflection installation through the TCP/IP channel, do not select Disable.Net API (in the Set up API Macro and API Security workspace settings dialog box) until you are ready to use the IPC (Inter-Process Communication) channel for all of these applications. If you disable the .Net API and then re-enable it later, Reflectionwill use the IPC channel.

Legacy Support

Reflection 2011 protects the investment you've made in previous products. You can open and run sessions created in legacy Reflection, EXTRA!, Micro Focus RUMBA, or IBM PComm.

You can still run and edit the macros and scripts you created in legacy Reflection and EXTRA!, including encrypted EXTRA! macros. And, if you have macros that you created in Micro Focus RUMBA or IBM PComm, you can run those, too.

New Features for EXTRA! Users

Reflection 2011 includes many other updated features, such as FIPS 140-2 support for Secure Shell, Secure Sockets Layer protocol (SSL), and Transport Layer Security (TLS). SSL and TLS ensure secure access to hosts and gateways, and provide the tools to verify the authenticity of hosts, gateways, and clients. Also new to EXTRA! users is the Reflection Certificate Manager, which manages certificates for host and user authentication for SSL/TLS sessions. (Reflection also supports certificates in the Windows certificate store.).

For a complete list of new features, see the Reflection 2011 Release Notes.