AS/400 Centric Means User Friendly at DataCard

The marketplace has put the first generation of client/server development tools through their paces, and the reviews are mixed. No doubt, the graphical user interface (GUI), and the enhanced functionality that C/S delivers is what Windows-happy users want. But many companies have found that there is also a cost.

Depending on the tool chosen, migrating to client/server can force MIS departments and end users to abandon most of the AS/400 skills they've developed and start anew. If they've selected "client-centric" development tools as their migration path, for example, learning a new development language to build client/server applications is just the beginning. Issues like connectivity, communications, system complexity, security and data integrity can bring even the heartiest of system administrators to his knees.

When Minneapolis-based DataCard Corporation decided to take the new technology plunge, getting caught in a GUI, client/server quagmire was not an option. DataCard is the world's largest manufacturer of transaction terminals, swipe card terminals and photo desktop badges.

DataCard programmer, Barbara Love, sees C/S as a natural evolution in a world increasingly dominated by PC's. "For a long time, our company had mostly AS/400 terminals. When we decided to add personal computers, we needed a tool that worked along with both platforms."

The company's end users are driving the demand for point and click access to AS/400 data. Love sees client/server as an ideal opportunity to empower them. "Our users need the information. We wanted to give them real, live access to it. Client/server is a much more efficient way do that. I look at it as a user-friendly solution. It's the wave of the future."

When DataCard's software selection team initially conducted their development tool search, they looked into a variety of solutions. From AS/400 based tools to PC alternatives like Powersoft's Powerbuilder. Their chief concern was avoiding a steep client/server learning curve. "I wasn't sure how client/server worked," says Love. "I had no real working knowledge of it."

The team chose Lombard, Illinois-based michaels, ross & cole's (mrc) mrc-Productivity Series C/S. They hoped that a server-centric solution would translate to minimal learning curve, cost, and system complexity and maximum productivity. However, MIS demanded proof that mrc's claims were more than mere marketing hype. "I wanted to see how it actually worked," says Love. "So, I went to Lombard to take a one day training course on the product. When I first saw the demonstration I thought, 'This can't be right. It's too easy!"

Ultimately, DataCard concluded that a server-centric architecture would work well, while also allowing MIS to preserve data security and AS/400 business rules. "We decided to go with the mrc-Productivity Series C/S because of the different security levels we have on our AS/400-based human resources/payroll system. mrc's client/server solution provided many features, such as authorizations, that other C/S report writers simply didn't have."

A Server-Centric Litmus Test

The tool selected, DataCard was ready to put it to the test. To live up to its claims, they knew users should still be able to develop their applications and reports on the AS/400 in a specifications-based environment - like they're used to. Further, they'd now have the option of automatically generating a client/server version, without having to know or understand Windows-based programming. Finally, to deliver on mrc's promises, the new applications should run with virtually no perceptible changes in system performance.

"The first application we built," Love recalls, "was an assemble to order (ATO) program for the manufacturing department." An ATO specifications report sequentially describes the materials and assembly requirements for a manufactured item.

"We wanted the power to quickly access ATO data and then E-mail it to our east coast office. We built an mrc-Productivity Series C/S summary inquiry application that automatically retrieves ATO data from our manufacturing software system and compiles it. Then a simple C/S inquiry application automatically downloads the data into Windows-accessible data files that can be retrieved directly into Microsoft Access. The system creates everything, including the spreadsheet headings. Once the user formats the data as desired, all he has to do is E-mail it directly from Access."

Love says that the system takes users' AS/400 specifications and automatically generates Visual Basic code for the C/S inquiry application and spreadsheet downloading program, as well as high level RPG code for an AS/400 version. She feels that what goes on in the background makes the server-centric approach especially appealing to end users. "Behind the scenes, the mrc-Productivity Series C/S is generating the Visual Basic code that allows you to download the data from the AS/400 directly into PC applications. The users never know or see that it's generating code. Actually, they don't even realize they're using Visual Basic."

The success and popularity of the ATO data download application showed MIS that a server-centric approach to development delivers on the promises of client/server technology. It also avoids virtually all of the problems. "As far as performance goes, it runs fast. The system works really great because we can put all the data out on the network and download it to everyone else. As far as learning curve - there is none. The only training they need in order to generate their own C/S applications is an hour-long synopsis of how it works. It's very easy."

From a productivity standpoint, Love says that the server-centric tool streamlines development and business processes. "Time is where the mrc-Productivity Series C/S has made the biggest improvement compared to before. It only took about forty-five minutes to build the ATO application, generate the Visual Basic component, download the records into the Access file, and E-mail them out. And this ATO data download application, for example, is used on a weekly basis by two people. Each time we use it to E-mail data ends up saving someone about an hour of time."

Overall, Love concludes that technology this accessible promotes new and creative solutions, previously impossible on either the AS/400 or PC, alone. "In the case of the ATO report, before the mrc-Productivity Series C/S, we'd have to create an AS/400 report, run it on the outqueue and then move it to the recipient's outqueue. We couldn't take advantage of our E-mail system to transmit AS/400 data."

Empowering End Users

After MIS' successful trials, they did what most MIS departments only dream of: handing the tool over to non-technical end users. Love comments, "The purpose of choosing the mrc-Productivity Series C/S was to give our users faster and more efficient access to the data they need, without having to put in a request to MIS and wait in the backlog until we got to them."

Roberta Bisek, a documentation specialist in the manufacturing/engineering division, was one of the first end users to work with the software. Although she has no technical background, Bisek is nonetheless responsible for providing mission critical AS/400 data to the manufacturing floor. For example, she is responsible for writing work instructions on manufacturing change orders - the documentation that accompanies changes in the manufacturing process. "Most of what I report on relates to the individual parts being manufactured. I query the system to see if there were any change orders. I develop 'date range' reports to find out what happened to various parts during a specific time period. Things like that."

Increasingly, Bisek receives requests that are difficult, if not impossible to deliver in a pure, text-based AS/400 environment. "People were telling me they were interested in using report data in Windows applications. Coincidentally, Barbara Love had just told me we were getting the mrc-Productivity Series C/S." Bisek wanted to explore how it could enhance the usefulness of the AS/400 data she delivered. "Both things happened at the same time. I was at the center, bringing C/S to the people in manufacturing who wanted the information."

Her first project was a "working instructions" inquiry and download application used by manufacturing workers. "They look at the retrieved data to get part descriptions, to find out where parts are located on the floor, to find out how many they need and what they're supposed to do with them. The final document is set up in a Microsoft Word chart by the production manager."

Bisek, therefore, wanted to deliver the AS/400 data to the production manager in a format he could easily incorporate into his Word document without having to rekey and reformat data. And because text-based AS/400 applications and reports are still heavily used throughout DataCard, it was also important to have the data available in a "green-screen" environment.

The server-centric development model proved ideal for accomplishing this goal. In less than one hour, Bisek was able to generate the AS/400 retrieval and the Visual Basic client/server counterpart without knowing any AS/400 or Windows programming.

She built the applications on the AS/400 - the environment to which she was already accustomed - simply by responding to menued prompts and inputting her specifications. To create the client/server version, the only additional step was to respond "yes" to a prompt which tells the mrc-Productivity Series C/S to generate Visual Basic output for the client/server version. "That's it. Now, whenever I want to generate this inquiry and download it to a spreadsheet, all I have to do is get on my PC, click on my 'client maker' icon, enter the part number I'm interested in, and click to download. The system asks me where I want the data to go. I give it a file name which I can then call directly into Excel. From there, I can E-mail the spreadsheet to the production manager, and he can incorporate it into his Microsoft Word document."

Bisek says that before she built the working instructions download application, the production manager would have to do a painstaking manual search to access the same data. "He had to go to the AS/400 and look up each individual part number, and then enter data into the spreadsheet piece by piece. The time and cost savings, she says, are dramatic. "Any particular working instructions report could require information on a hundred or more parts. We might run this one twice, sometimes three times a day. And each one probably saves an employee about three hours of work. That's a lot of time."

Server-Centric Delivers

DataCard has learned that joining the C/S revolution doesn't mean abandoning employees' existing AS/400 knowledge-base and starting all over again. At least in the case of their server-centric tool, the feared client/server bogeyman turned out to be simply a paper tiger.

"Client/server is not difficult at all, Love stresses. "That was my biggest surprise. At first, I didn't believe it was as easy as point and click. That's why I insisted on taking an mrc-Productivity Series C/S class. I told mrc that if I've got to train people on the tool, I've got to know how it works. It turns out, it really is that easy and user friendly."

Bisek agrees, adding, "I found the mrc-Productivity Series C/S very easy to use. It's been a big time saver. It's enabled people to do things they couldn't do before. It makes information much more accessible. Most people here aren't yet aware of C/S' potentials. It needs a little publicity. But they're always interested in getting things faster and better than yesterday."