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by Duncan Kenzie
Published 02/23/2006
Modernizing iSeries legacy applications is a
priority for many development shops. One of the best ways to modernize is to
move applications from the text-based, green-screen world to the graphical,
readily available Web environment.
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While this may seem like an intimidating
proposition at first, you can modernize your applications using solutions that
require minimal knowledge of new technologies and almost no hand-coding. BCD's
WebSmart is such a solution. WebSmart lets you produce true Web applications
that take full advantage of all the latest technologies and Web programming
techniques. And because WebSmart can produce ILE CGI or Java servlet
applications, you are not constrained to running your applications on just the
iSeries; you have a possible migration path to prepare you for future
explorations in Web development.
WebSmart uses highly productive
application development techniques—such as visual design aids, templates,
and intelligent wizards—that leverage your skills as a business
application designer and developer. WebSmart eliminates many of the tedious,
time-consuming chores of hand-coding to make you highly productive and
effective. In fact, you can often write complete, Web-native applications in as
little time as it would take to generate a simple screen-scraper. But the
finished product is far superior; you'll be running native ILE CGI programs or
Java servlets directly on the iSeries with no run-time interpreter or additional
layers added to your applications. WebSmart's server-side components deliver
HTML or rich-client Web pages that comprise all the features you've come to
expect from commercial Web sites—beautiful graphics, drop-down menus,
expanding trees, options for Flash movies, Google-like AJAX functionality,
log-in pages, powerful search functions, pop-up window lookups, complete
order-entry functionality, shopping carts, file maintenance tools, query tools,
and more. And WebSmart supports SSL and includes native tools for 128-bit AES
encryption along with iSeries user profile validation functions to allow you to
create applications as secure as or more secure than any 5250 green-screen
application.
WebSmart includes a native Windows application as the
workbench, or IDE. This powerful yet intuitive interface allows developers to
work with both major components of WebSmart applications: the visual component
(HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Flash, etc.) and the server-side component (a robust
programming environment that uses a language similar to free-format RPG for
writing your application logic). In addition, the IDE tightly integrates with
the iSeries database, showing you file and field information and automatically
updating that information when file layout changes occur. HTML design tools
include mini-wizards that prompt you for everything you need (eliminating the
need to know HTML syntax), drag-and-drop functionality to easily place database
fields on Web pages, a visual preview page that shows an accurate representation
of the final product, and real-time syntax-checking to help eliminate coding
errors.
(Click diagrams to view full size)
Figure 1: Easily link files for Rapid Application Development in
WebSmart.
WebSmart's templates touch much more than just the
appearance of your Web pages; they encapsulate all the server-side logic
required to build complete applications without coding. The intelligent wizards
let you simply follow a set of prompts to design a series of connected pages
that take a user through the typical steps used in business applications, such
as adding or changing inventory records, entering sales transactions, creating
customer accounts, maintaining hospital patient admissions information, etc.
The templates are extensible and programmable, so you can teach the tool to
step you through your own customized set of design steps to produce applications
that conform to your organization's standards. By customizing the templates
once, you control what design steps the IDE guides you through.
Figure 2: The WebSmart IDE has powerful HTML editing
tools.
WebSmart also includes powerful legacy-code conversion tools
that instantly convert DDS to HTML with active content and convert RPG to
WebSmart's coding environment. To modernize your Web applications, you can
easily leverage entire sections of legacy code or choose only subroutines or
lines of code. The conversion tool lets you view your original code and the
converted code side by side, giving you a clear point of reference for the
modernized application.
WebSmart has many enterprise-level features for
rapid development, so teams of developers can work as effectively as one- or
two-person shops. These include powerful project management and change
management features such as checkout/check-in support, testing, QA and
development environments, version control, archiving, and comparison.
The WebSmart Central Repository is a business and presentation rules
"warehouse" that stores and manages rules attached to database components so you
can further speed development by defining logic, database relations, and
user-interface components up front, prior to creating any applications. The
Central Repository can be shared by many developers on a server, and it supports
such advanced features as inheritance. True to WebSmart's ease of use, though,
you can start writing and deploying Web applications within minutes after
installing the product; use of the Repository is optional.
Figure 3: This application was built in minutes with WebSmart. Use
prebuilt templates or your own look and feel.
Modernizing your
iSeries applications doesn't stop with WebSmart. Solutions such as Nexus,
Catapult, and Clover are parts of BCD's integrated family of software that you
can acquire independently or as a suite. Together, they allow your organization
to take advantage of technology once available only on other servers. For
example, the Nexus Web portal product provides a secure, managed framework for
deploying WebSmart or other applications in a consistent Web interface, along
with Enterprise Content Management (ECM) capabilities. So you can give users
control over not only their traditional database-driven business applications
but also content stored as Word, Excel, or Adobe PDF files. The IT department
controls access to applications and documents, while granting rights to users to
create more powerful pages that include capabilities such as Web access to spool
files, instant messaging, and calendars. In addition, WebSmart and Nexus
integrate with Catapult, BCD's unattended report distribution software. Catapult
runs in batch to directly feed documents in real time to the Nexus ECM, with
powerful indexing and search capabilities attached to each document.
Modernizing your iSeries applications is easier and faster than you may
think. iSeries people truly understand WebSmart. This has been proven by over
1,000 organizations implementing WebSmart solutions. With WebSmart and the
integrated suite of products, you can modernize your iSeries applications
today.
Duncan Kenzie is President and CTO
of BCD
Technical Support, the development and support group for WebSmart,
Nexus, Catapult, and Clover. He can be reached at Duncan@excelsystems.com.
Business Computer Design, Int'l, Inc. (BCD)
Contact: Eric Figura,
Director, Sales and Marketing
950 N. York Rd.
Hinsdale, IL
60521-2950
Tel: 630.986.0800
Fax: 630.986.0926
Web: www.bcdsoftware.com
Email: Eric@bcdsoftware.com
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