Ralph Smith of RSI, Inc., in Syracuse, Indiana, has been developing applications for 20 years.

He used an S/34 to launch his engineering release management system, which he describes as "a glorified project manager for engineering," and has been helping customers modify it ever since on an S/36, S/38, AS/400, iSeries, System i, and now IBM i.

"I think the i is a marvelous platform," Smith confirms.

His tool of choice in the green-screen days when he wanted to enter the Windows world was ASNA's Visual RPG Classic for COM. "The technology bridges the i system and Windows very nicely," he says.

About a year ago he decided to web-enable his engineering change management application. "At the same time I wanted to get expanded functionality to incorporate the idea of customer support on products that are in the field," Smith explains.

Enter Visual RPG for Microsoft .NET

Once again, he turned to ASNA--this time to the company's Visual RPG for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET product. AVR .NET is an RPG compiler that helps RPG programmers modernize applications, develop web services, and extend i systems to .NET while continuing to program with a familiar, RPG-like syntax. AVR integrates into Microsoft's Visual Studio .NET and compiles to 100 percent verifiable Microsoft Intermediate Language.

"I selected it because I am familiar with ASNA's technology. I am familiar with RPG. AVR .NET lets me work in Windows and IBM i very easily. The data communication--DataGate--is the connection to the i and Windows world," Smith reports. DataGate provides database access to applications with a single, integrated view.

"What I am building right now is a web-based version of my original program idea, and I'm embellishing it with some additional functions for serial # tracking and service call management," he says. "Engineering change management controls what is in a product's configuration, serial # management associates what has been sold with the correct historical configuration, and service call management tracks support calls and links to the historical configuration so decisions for replacement parts are accurate."

He likens the process to manufacturing bicycles. It's easy when every bike is the same. However, if each bicycle is a bit different because of customer preference or product evolution, you can no longer use just one bill of material configuration for customer service requests.

The New Design

Smith is designing his web-enabled application to be able to manage bills and materials, administer the serial numbers and data that go along with them, and establish customer management field unit support.

"The engineering part of it is in production, and the serial and case management are in beta mode," he says. "I have spent a year at this point. It's 50+ different pages now and has probably about 70 different panels that people would work with in this application."

Tackling Challenges

Smith acknowledges that he has faced challenges with the project. "Anybody who has programmed and had to switch languages knows that you need a bit of education and a lot of experimentation. You have to learn some new tricks. You have to get your arms around a lot of different syntaxes. The web presents new issues with .NET, HTML, and JavaScript. Luckily there's AVR, and i is in the background that is the stable element of the whole thing. The i sits there and works as a wonderful server and robust environment."

In the end, he envisions an application that is easy for IT to deploy and support. "Users will not have to have anything installed on their machine to run the application. All they need is a web browser.

"Using AVR Classic as a client, you had to install the application on each user's machine and go through setup to create a database connection, and you needed processes to roll out updates. With AVR .NET, it's set up once on a server, updates are applied to the server, and the users just need a web browser and they're in business," he explains.

The ASNA Connection

Smith credits ASNA with helping RSI in its modernization efforts. "It has been an excellent experience. I think the world of that company. They have done a nice job with the applications. AVR Classic was right there at the right time, and I think employing .NET is the next step in the evolution.

"ASNA technology is able to do what I need it to do. It has supported everything I have needed it to."