When local government officials in Sioux City, Iowa, needed a way to provide attorneys with round-the-clock access to garnishment case files, they turned to ASNA's Visual RPG 8.0 for Visual Studio 2005 to create a website that integrated their System i with the .NET framework. The result is 24 happy Woodbury County law offices that now have a 24/7 connection and several relieved sheriff's office clerks who no longer have to field hundreds of information requests each month.

Before partnering with ASNA, city officials exported System i data to the web by downloading files to an SQL server, which exposed the information on Intel-based websites. What the Sioux City folks really needed was interactive, realtime System i database access.

John Brandt, senior system analyst for the Woodbury County Information and Communication Commission, says the officials selected ASNA's Visual RPG (AVR) because they are "more comfortable with AVR than C# or Visual Basic .NET and like the way ASNA easily provides access to System i databases." He notes that they also appreciate being able to use RPG and Visual Studio 2005.

In addition to the AVR tool, Brandt says his office uses ASNA DataGate for .NET, the ASNA DataGate Component Suite for .NET, and Visual Studio .NET Enterprise. The Iowa system also employs ASP.NET Web Forms.

In a short time, Brandt says, the IT center installed the products, viewed training examples available online, and designed web pages. "It only took a matter of days to create the solution, and it has been very reliable since it was deployed," he reports. It now takes less than an hour a month to manage the new system. Logins number more than 420 a month.

AVR = Modernization

AVR is a modern implementation of RPG that lets RPG developers build web and Windows applications. It provides direct, secure, and speedy access to both files and program objects on IBM's System i server and Microsoft's SQL Server. Using a familiar but modernized syntax, RPG programmers can quickly apply their long-standing RPG experience to create modern applications that connect seamlessly to the System i platform.

With AVR, RPG programmers can modernize existing RPG applications, develop web services, and extend System i applications to .NET while continuing to program with a familiar, RPG-like syntax.

The solution features complex, powerful user interfaces and a streamlined web development model that does not require IIS on developer PCs. The product's partial classes help separate Visual Studio-generated source from the source customers create and also help eliminate coding errors. The AVR DB administration library helps the solution programmatically perform database administrative tasks, such as adding and clearing members and checking for file existence.

ASNA DataGate is available as a host server for connectivity to DB2/400, as a System i database for Microsoft Windows Servers and desktops, and as a host server for connectivity to Microsoft's SQL Server. The Component Suite offers Visual C# and Visual Basic .NET — a .NET assembly that gives fast, reliable, and scalable access to System i physical and logical files. It also provides a high-speed program call that lets Visual C# and Visual Basic .NET programmers call i5/OS program objects.

AVR = Round-the-Clock Results

With ASNA's products, "Attorneys can get instant access to case information 24/7 and don't have to rely on calling a clerk on the phone," Brandt notes. "The attorneys really like to be able to check their cases any time they want, and several use the site at night and on weekends." In addition to saving phone time, Brandt cites quick market time, speedy benefit time, scalability, and ease of integration as advantages of the AVR solution. "The clerks have more time available for other work and do not have to field calls and look up information all day long," he points out. The city plans to add another search screen as well as the ability to export directly into Microsoft Excel.

"Since getting our feet wet with this project, we have created websites for viewing and maintaining mug shots, employee payroll information, police officer scheduling, climbing-wall reservations, and animal control," Brandt reports. "We have also written several applications with AVR, most recently to create import files for our water-billing hand-held devices and to process the files exported by the devices to our billing system."

The Sioux City Way

Sioux City, with a population of 80,000 plus and a staff of more than 600 government employees, is the county seat (Figure 1) of Iowa's Woodbury County. The Woodbury County Information and Communication Commission governs the operation of the Information Services and Communication Center for the city and county. It is responsible for implementing, operating, and maintaining computer hardware and software and for providing protective communications services.

By making attorneys and sheriff's office clerks happy and speeding the processing of garnishment case files, the commission has opened the creative door to a myriad of helpful websites.

Vicki Hamende is a senior editor for System iNEWS.

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Visual RPG 8.0 for Visual Studio 2005