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ASNA Case Study
ASNA Wings: Re-imagining
Modernization at INFOCON –
Both Ways.
At a glance...
Customer Profile
The INFOCON Corporation has been
Modernizing for a GUI doesn’t mean you have to give
up the power of RPG.
supplying Pennsylvania with software
By Thomas M. Stockwell
Situation
Fueled by the talent of more than a dozen IBM RPG programmers,
and an overall staff of 50, INFOCON is an IBM Business Partner with
a vision of efficiency and service for its clients. But modernizing to a
fully functional, user-friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI) has
been a challenge.
INFOCON is an ISV that provides IBM i
That is, until ASNA Wings.
Solution
INFOCON’s Quality Software Services
INFOCON used ASNA Wings to create browser-
The INFOCON Corporation has been supplying Pennsylvania with
software solutions since 1976. It uses the midrange technologies of
IBM servers to provide excellent best-of-class software and services
to county and municipal governments as well as commercial
businesses. Its Administrative, Judicial, and Tax Management
systems have proven, over the years, to provide an unparalleled
quality of service to county, school districts, and municipal
governments throughout the Keystone State.
applications. Wings fits INFOCON nicely for
Re-engineering vs. Modernization
But responding to customer requirements for a Graphical User
Interface using past RPG modernization and re-engineering
software tools has not been easy.
“We’ve tried nearly everything that’s out there,” said Regis
Bodenschatz, President of INFOCON. “We were very early to follow
the path of application re-engineering using a number of new
languages, as well as a wide variety of modernization tools.”
solutions since 1976.
software services to county and municipal
governments. Previous efforts to improve the
UI of its IBM i application have all been
unsuccessful.
based GUI user interfaces for its RPG
several reasons, but especially because it
required no changes to the existing RPG
programs.
Benefits
Wings lets INFOCON provide its new
modernized user interface to users, or if
necessary, fall back to the traditional user
interface. The speed with which
applications can be modernized with
Wings has let INFOCON accelerate its
application modernization schedule
dramatically.
Products
ASNA Wings, AVR.NET, DataGate,
IBM i, i5, DB2/400, Visual Studio
.NET
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Leaders in IBM i Modernization
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These past attempts included Synon/2E, IBM VisualAge RPG, VB.NET, a long list of third-party developer utilities,
screen-scraper technologies, and other RPG modernization tools. Only a few delivered the level of power and quality of
screen presentation that INFOCON customers required. “Some of these tools proved to be very solid products,”
Bodenschatz said. “But many required a complete re-engineering our primary products, and that’s a long and difficult
task.”
Particularly daunting is maintaining two versions of the same application: One for GUI and one for Green Screen. Such
“dual-maintenance” change management processes can prove to be a nightmare.
But why have two versions of the same program?
The Green Screen Conundrum: Re-engineering vs. Modernization
“We have a lot of users who still prefer the Green Screen.” Bodenschatz said “They prefer the ‘heads-down’ keying
efficiencies of the Green Screens.”
But in a world in which new customers see Green Screen as “old technology” Bodenschatz wanted a strategy that could
modernize the front-end, while sustaining the core of RPG source.
INFOCON’s major governmental applications contain thousands of Display Formats (DDS specifications), that are highly
customized to achieve ease-of-use benefits around the Green Screen interface. So it’s not a simple task to simply build a
front-end GUI.
That’s the primary problem associated with nearly all GUI modernization implementations: How do you make each GUI
screen as functional as the original Green Screen design? Moreover, re-engineering tried-and-true RPG programs
within a new programming development environment is resource-intensive.
“We’ve spent a lot in the re-development and re-engineering in the past,” Bodenschatz said. But the results were not
what they needed to be. Re-engineering was expensive, time-consuming, and ultimately not up to their product
standards.
ASNA Wings: A New Approach to Modernizing Applications
With these challenges in mind, Bodenschatz was intrigued by the ASNA Wings modernizing tool. ASNA Wings promises
a way to quickly migrate the GUI front-end of the applications, without touching the back-end of the RPG.
ASNA Wings is a true RPG application modernization tool. It’s not a screen scraper but a display screen source code
converter, translating RPG DDS to .NET ASPX to provide a fully functional GUI Web interface formatted with CSS. It
accomplishes this with a single, one-time process. All the RPG logic remains the same and continues to run on the IBM
i platform; but what the user sees on a Web browser is a new, fully functional GUI.
The conversion of DSPFM to .ASPX is a quick, two-step process: The programmer inserts one RPG F-spec keyword
called “Handler” into the RPG source code that activates the IBM Rational Open Access RPG Edition (OAR). (OAR is an
inexpensive licensed program enhancement to RPG that permits an ILE RPG program to access new devices and
resources that are not directly supported by RPG.)
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In the second step, the programmer selects the display file to be converted, and ASNA Wings does the rest. It copies
the DDS source code from the IBM i into a separate area, and then translates the code into .NET ASPX. This process
takes only seconds.
Of course, with RPG's long history, and so many different styles of Display File formats created over the years, there
may be further minor customization of the DDS required in the conversion process. But the point is that ASNA Wings
provides you with the tool that performs 99% of the heavy lifting. It streamlines the conversion process; short-cutting
what was previously a highly detailed re-engineering task.
When the RPG source code is recompiled, the OAR redirects the display data-stream to the new ASPX web display files.
Now, when a user accesses the compiled object of the RPG application, the display is presented as a fully functional
GUI in a Web browser. No RPG logic statements are ever changed, and all back-end code remains completely
functional.
Best of all, using ASNA Wings, the programmer can conditionally compile the RPG source to create two program
objects: One that is for Green Screen, and one that is for GUI. In this way, there’s no need to maintain two separate
RPG source members to support two different display formats.
How Fast is the ASNA Wings Process?
INFOCON instituted a testing process to determine how quickly it might be able to convert a complete application
using ASNA Wings. The application included over 200 DDS display formats, and numerous CALLS to subprograms. They
completed this conversion process in under a week, inserting the Handler keyword, selecting the source members,
and recompiling the entire application’s base source members. This delivered a complete application object with a
functional GUI, based in .NET ASPX running in a Web browser.
Bodenschatz was so impressed with the speed of this conversion that he’s instructed his team to go the next step:
Customizing the .NET ASPX display formats to their company product standards around a consistent Cascading Style
Sheet (CSS).
Using Microsoft’s Visual Studio IDE, Bodenschatz’s team is now quickly pushing forward with the customization using
an industry-standard IDE, fine-tuning the ASPX forms and tweaking the CSS. In the end, INFOCON will have both the
Green Screen presentation layer and a fully functional Web-based GUI, each running from the same RPG source. It’s
exactly what INFOCON strategy demanded.
Modernizing Beyond RPG
But that’s not all. The resulting .NET ASPX forms can be further enhanced with other Web-targeted scripting tools,
such as AJAX and JavaScript, actually extending the functionality of the GUI far beyond the limits of RPG, and offering
his customers new value to proven code. This is the power of the ASNA Wings approach: It permits INFOCON’s team
to re-imagine the application beyond the limits of native RPG for Web users. Yet the underlying RPG program logic will
continue to operate precisely as before.
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Advantages for INFOCON
This overall ASNA Wings modernization strategy represents a number of unique advantages for INFOCON:
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ASNA Wings converts the DDS display formats into a fully functional Web-based GUI in the industry
standard of .NET ASPX forms.
The resulting presentation layer is formatted with the state-of-the-Web Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) that
can be centralized for consistent look-and-feel of the GUI.
Customization of the presentation layer can be managed with Microsoft’s Visual Studio utilizing C#,
VB.NET, or ASNA’s Visual RPG.NET.
The organization can further enhance the presentation layer of the application with additional services
through .NET, such as AJAX, JavaScript, etc. transparently. Again, they will never touch the core business
logic of the ILE RPG application. So the investment in RPG is preserved.
The process maintains good change management practices that are controllable and highly scalable,
without a lot of maintenance overhead.
One RPG source member can perform double-duty for both the Green Screen and the GUI objects by
conditionally compiling the RPG source.
By using IBM Rational Open Access RPG Edition (OAR), the process falls squarely within IBM’s RPG
modernization support profile. It’s not dependent upon some third-party “code access” interface that
might restrict the application’s future functionality. It creates a well-documented data stream that is
compliance with IBM Rational’s support.
If desired, ASNA Wings offers the organization a future transitional path for a complete migration off the
IBM i through ASNA Monarch migration suite. That’s because everything that ASNA Wings creates is fully
reusable for ASNA Monarch.
ASNA at INFOCON: A Legacy of Respect
So what is INFOCON’s opinion of ASNA and its newest ASNA Wings product?
INFOCON was already familiar with ASNA’s product line from firsthand experience with ASNA Monarch and ASNA
Visual RPG: Both were excellent tools in Bodenschatz’s opinion.
“We’ve used ASNA products in the past and found them to be a good partner.” Bodschatz says. “Their support is great,
and their products work. In fact, when we’ve seen an opportunity to make something better in ASNA Wings, they’ve
been very receptive and responsive. They’re even bringing some of those ideas out in the next release.”
But what does it mean to INFOCON’s long-range strategies with the IBM i? Does this mean they are considering
migrating off the IBM i?
No, says Bodenschatz. “We’ve no plans to move off the IBM i. We have been on IBM’s midrange platforms since the
beginning. We really appreciate the integrated functionality of the IBM i. It’s IBM’s best platform for business.” He is a
true believer in the IBM i. Moving off the platform was never INFOCON’s goal.
And what about RPG’s future with INFOCON?
“Our development team consists of RPG programmers,” Bodenschatz stressed. “We have other skills, but we still feel
that – for business applications – RPG is superior for our needs. And we intend to maintain our expertise in this area.”
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Re-imagination: The Final Strategy for Modernization
INFOCON has stepped through nearly every RPG GUI modernization tool in the market. They’ve modernized, reengineered, rebuilt, and re-evaluated the final outcome at each tool along the way. And they were not wholly
satisfied. In the end they decided that for their products modernization shouldn’t mean re-inventing the application,
but re-examining the problems of RPG and re-imagining the modernization solution.
They wanted to keep their investment in RPG logic. They wanted to maintain a good change-management process by
maintaining only one RPG source member. But they also wanted a fully realized, customizable GUI that could impress
their clients and satisfy the needs of GUI-centric customer expectations.
In other words, they wanted it both ways: GUI and Green Screen, all within an IBM product support profile on the
IBM i.
INFOCON is meeting the aggressive goals of this re-imagined strategy. And they’re using ASNA Wings to do it.
About ASNA
ASNA, provides comprehensive and flexible solutions for modernizing IBM i applications to the Microsoft .NET
platform. ASNA enables companies to integrate and extend their solutions to .NET, the Web and beyond, while
preserving investments in IT and human resources. ASNA solutions are distributed worldwide and used by more than
a million end users.
ASNA is a Gold Level partner of Microsoft's Partner Network, Microsoft Visual Studio Industry Partner, and an
Advanced Tier Member of IBM's PartnerWorld for Developers. ASNA is also a gold level partner of Microsoft's
Platform Modernization Alliance.
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