ASNA Moves Developers and Tools Forward

Published: January 3, 2006

by Alex Woodie

Programmers who use Amalgamated Software of North America (ASNA)'s RPG-like development tools got some cool toys for Christmas. Among the goodies is a new release of ASNA Visual RPG (AVR) Classic for COM that moves code from the traditional COM environment to the new .NET paradigm. AVR programmers who have been nice also got a pledge from ASNA to support Microsoft's SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005, and .NET Framework 2.0 with new releases of its software this month.

For the past 24 years, ASNA has been making development tools that expand the development and runtime options available to IBM midrange programmers. Today, the flagship of this toolset is AVR, a development environment that is familiar to traditional RPG, but which compiles to run on Windows operating systems, and accesses Microsoft's SQL Server database (or DB2/400 through the ASNA DataGate offering), and which plugs into Microsoft's popular Visual Studio suite of tools.

Organizations that adopt AVR, which tend to be iSeries development shops and ISVs, benefit from greater Windows functionality. In its most drastic form, AVR provides an off-ramp from the OS/400 platform to the Windows environment, but perhaps more importantly, AVR provides a way for OS/400-based RPG applications and Windows applications to live together in greater harmony. While Microsoft's Windows Server platform stack has moved forward considerably in the past five years, it still hasn't mastered all of the OS/400 server's tricks--and it may never--which makes co-existence and integration between Windows and iSeries servers a priority.

To this end, ASNA last month introduced AVR Classic for COM version 4.1, a new release of its AVR compiler designed to help developers using ASNA's older COM-based development tools to make the move to .NET.

One of the key new features introduced with AVR Classic for COM version 4.1 is the .NET Upgrade Assistant, which helps developers convert COM-based class libraries to .NET-based class libraries. ASNA says that, while the COM- and .NET-based development models are very different, the Upgrade Assistant can speed migration to the new .NET model and minimize the amount of manual conversion work needed to move to the .NET-based Web development model.

The new release also sports a new interface that looks more like Visual Studio, including the display of multiple documents and docking windows, ASNA says. AVR Classic for COM version 4.1 is available now as a free upgrade to all paying customers currently on versions 3.5 and 4.0.

ASNA is also moving forward with support in its flagship AVR for .NET offering for Microsoft's long-awaited new development environment and database management system, Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005, as well as the .NET Framework. This trio of development and runtime tools was released to manufacturing by Microsoft in November, and developers are just now starting to get their hands on them.

The San Antonio, Texas, company last month said users can expect support for Microsoft's new tools in AVR .NET and DataGate sometime in January. It also said it would support these tools with Monarch, an RPG to .NET code translation tool, sometime in the first quarter.

ASNA says the new releases of its tools will make it "effortless" to integrate SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 with OS/400 applications, and allow RPG developers and Visual Basic and C# developers to "work side by side . . . in the deployment of Web services."

ASNA president Anne Ferguson says Microsoft's .NET Framework is the ideal way for OS/400 shops to modernize their RPG applications with Web services and service oriented architectures (SOA). "Today we are signaling our continued belief that this is the best architecture for the market," she says.

Eduardo Ross, ASNA's lead developer, also added vocal support for Microsoft's new database and associated development tools. "Visual Studio 2005, the .NET Framework 2.0, and SQL Server 2005 provide a compelling foundation for building business solutions," he says.

The upcoming release of AVR for .NET will build on the last release, AVR for .NET version 7.2, which ASNA unveiled in October (see "AVR Provides a Better Alternative Than Screen Scraping, ASNA Says").

In other ASNA news, the company is ramping up for its ASNApalooza 2006 developer conference. Developers can sign up for ASNA's eighth annual 'Palooza, which is being held May 10-12 at the La Cantera resort in San Antonio, at www.asna.com/palooza/.