News & Views, October 2000

Automatically generate Web applications that access live AS/400 data

Lombard, IL, September 20, 2000 - michaels, ross & cole, ltd. (mrc) today announced that the mrc-Productivity Series2000, the AS/400 tool suite for Web site creation, rapid application development, and report writing, is now capable of generating CGI applications. The addition of this popular Internet technology to its already robust Web application offerings further positions the mrc-Productivity Series2000 as a leading AS/400 Web application development product.

The CGI, or common gateway interface, application allows the Internet user to communicate with the Web server to obtain live data, without loading a client application, such as a Java applet. The CGI program is executed in real-time and outputs dynamic information. Database queries, online forms, and message boards are common CGI applications. The mrc-Productivity Series2000 quickly and easily generates CGI applications that allow the user to obtain live AS/400 data in a familiar Web environment.

"Companies who want to allow customers, distributors, employees, or vendors to retrieve AS/400 data over the Internet will find CGI applications to be an extremely user-friendly Web application," says Tracy Doell, mrc Director of Communications. "From an IT standpoint, the ability to build and deploy those CGI applications with very little development effort or learning curve is a huge time and money saver. Our customers are building these applications in a matter of minutes."

CGI specifies how to pass arguments to the executing program as part of the HTTP request. The program then generates HTML, which is passed back to the browser. The CGI program can, for example, access information in a database and format the results as HTML.

This enhancement improves Web/Java Reports by allowing batched reports to be emailed back to the end user. Now, you can control all the options displayed on the screen using HTML parameters. You may display as little as a Run Report Button. Also, the MRCRPTSND command now includes new parameters such as email subject, from email address, and an option to retain the spool file.

Download the software update here.

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Over the past four decades, COMMON has evolved from a few IT professionals sitting around a kitchen table to the world’s largest midrange IT users group! The Fall 2000 Conference is in Baltimore, Maryland, October 22 - 26.

Here’s your chance to take advantage of the many educational, networking, and informative opportunities that COMMON provides. And don’t forget to stop by the mrc booth! In booth #128, we’ll be demonstrating the latest product enhancements. We hope to see you there!

The IBM Extreme Business Tour is making a stop in your city! Take advantage of this educational opportunity and visit mrc at one of these shows:

October 3, Minneapolis, MN
October 5, Cincinnati, OH
October 10, Calgary, CAN
October 17, Vancouver, CAN
October 19, Seattle, WA
October 31, San Francisco, CA
November 2, Los Angeles, CA

Click here for more information on these events.

This month’s technical article is part two of a two-part article regarding an issue that many mrc customers face. Controlling runtime record selection is a commonly used feature. But what happens when an External Object is involved? Brian Crowley provides us with the answers in this article.

If you are interested in applying the techniques discussed in last month’s newsletter, it might be useful to understand how they work programmatically. The remainder of this article contains a more technical description of how runtime record selection is accomplished.

Inquiries, graphs, and maintenance applications (online applications) use one method for runtime record selection; reports and summaries (batch applications) use another method. Online applications use the fact that they can be "Smartlinked to" in order to select certain records. The external object is called once at program initialization (INZSR.) The object returns the key values that the mrc-generated program should run with, and the program behaves as if it had been "Smartlinked to." This forces the program to perform a SETLL and READE on the logical file. The result is an online application that can read through only a certain set of the logical file records. The key values returned by the external object determine that set of data. The good news is that this method is very fast: there is only one call to the external object and the RPG program positions exactly to the correct key value and starts reading from there. The downside is that this means that only the key values can be used to determine which records will be available during runtime.

Reports and summaries are batch applications. Batch applications cannot be "Smartlinked to," so they use a different method to accomplish runtime record selection. The external object is called after each record has been read (READRECRD.) The object performs a test and returns a flag to the mrc-generated program controlling whether to use or skip this particular record. The good news is that you can use very powerful logic to determine whether or not each record should be available at runtime. You can pass any of the fields in the application to the external object to use in your logic. You are not forced to use only key fields for runtime selection as you are in online applications. The downside here is that this method is relatively slow, since every single record needs to be read and the object called for each read.

These techniques are valid in all mrc Web applications (Java and CGI), green-screen reports and summaries, and client/server retrievals and reports. If you are interested in using these techniques to improve your applications, but do not have staff available to create external objects for your specific needs, please contact the mrc help desk and ask for consulting services. mrc’s consultants could write these types of external objects for you promptly and inexpensively.

mrc offers training sessions at both your location and ours. Visit our education area for more information on our education services, or click here to view our schedule for the entire year. (You will have to log in with your user name and password to visit this area. If you need login instructions, please click here first.)