Green Screen Modernization - AS/400, iSeries, AS400

Green-Screen Modernization

Many companies with IBM iSeries or AS/400 computer systems are looking at ways to modernize legacy applications. IBM and a host of other vendors are hawking screen-scrapers like Websphere and Seagull that take old green-screen code and convert it into mouse-driven applications. Ad campaigns use terms like "preserve the valuable application intellect that was designed specifically for your company." They say things like "Don't loose the logic you've developed, so keep your old code's logic and modernize the user-interface with easy-to-use tools."

Seldom do you hear any of them point out that your 15 (or 20) year-old code and logic was designed for use with the computers available 20 years ago. None of your 20 year-old code takes advantage of the technologies available today. Most of those old legacy applications were batch oriented and designed to use as few computer resources as possible ...because 20 years ago the computer's processing power was very expensive and had very limited power when compared to the technology and cpu power of today's computers.

Other vendors are hawking tools to take your old code and convert it to Java. Java is a powerful and complex language. Some of these tools convert old RPG or Cobol programs to Java quickly and easily, but you end up with 20 year-old code now written in Java.

Since very few RPG programmers understand how to write in Java or take advantage of the power it extends to application development, you end-up with 20 year-old code that you can't easily modify, enhance, or modernize its logic.

Companies that have purchased any of these slick conversion tools have learned "the hard way" that they now have code lacking any improvement in functionality, and most conversions look exactly like the old green-screen ...except that now the background is grey and the letters are white. Any idea of easily adding modern functionality at this point is quickly doomed because it required abandoning the only code they knew how to work with and would have to developing in a new language that is quite foreign from RPG or Cobol.

The best thing to consider is purchasing new modern application code that does exactly what you want and is written in a language that your programmers can maintain and easily develop. That is what Xdata offers: Modern application code that works with your iSeries or AS/400 database computer and employs the IBM DB2/400 database platform and complies with OS/400 system applications.

Better yet, Xdata GXD (Graphical Xdata) code works with Microsoft Office and Windows-based applications such as AutoCAD. One more important consideration is that GXD (the exact same code) also works with PC servers. If your company decides that the IBM systems are to expensive or unavailable, you can switch to a PC server in a single weekend, and your users won't notice the different when they arrive on Monday ...because their applications remain exactly the same and they cannot distinguish in any way that the iSeries has been replaced by a Windows PC server.

Even more important, GXD incorporates bar-coding, EDI, and electronic distribution of documents via email and fax. All systems run in real time and there are no batch routines that need to be run. You can run a real-time P&L at any time during the month. You can open closed periods, make adjustments, and re-close re-opened periods easily ...and when you re-close ...all balance records are automatically update to reflect the adjustment!

20 year old systems don't offer these functions and it is less expensive to replace old code than to modernize it. Call us and learn the details.

We promise to help you find cost-effective solutions to every problem.