News Briefs and Product Shorts

ASNA Ships New iSeries Data Provider for .NET Languages

C# and Visual Basic.NET developers who are frustrated with the sluggishness of OLE DB- and ADO-based access to AS/400 and iSeries data will be thrilled to learn that ASNA's DataGate Component Suite for .NET is now shipping. DCS for .NET is a Windows-based data provider that provides any .NET-compliant language, such as VB.NET, C#, C++, or even Delphi, with record-level access to DB2/400.

In late May, ASNA said it expected to get DCS for .NET out the door by June 30, but it was delayed. "With our hugely successful launch of Visual RPG for .NET, we've brought thousands of iSeries servers and programmers to .NET," says ASNA president Anne Ferguson. "Now, with the DataGate Component Suite, we can take VB.NET and C# programming teams to the iSeries platform." ASNA claims that DCS for .NET is five times faster than OLE DB on the iSeries, and orders of magnitude faster than that as the number of users increase.

WebFOCUS on OS/400 Pays Dividends for Pierre Foods

Managers at processed food manufacturer Pierre Foods used to get reports on sales, revenue, and profits once a month. Since the company implemented Information Builders' WebFOCUS business intelligence software, more than 50 managers, executives, and sales representatives can find a performance update in their e-mail inbox every morning. The Cincinnati, Ohio, company, which produces a line of fully cooked meat and bakery products for schools, convenience stores, and other markets, went looking for a business intelligence tool product that was easy to use and could access data residing on three disparate systems, which house payroll, labor standard, and time and attendance data. The company settled on WebFOCUS and was even more impressed with the product when company officials decided to move it from a Windows server to an AS/400 server. "Installation and remapping of data and reports was very quick and easy," says Sally Miller, vice president of IT at Pierre Foods.

WebFOCUS delivers Pierre Foods executives and managers customized reports in the format of their choice, including PDF, HTML, or e-mail. It may seem obvious, but it's a lesson that bears repeating: keeping people in the loop is a good idea. "Pierre Foods understands the strategic importance that business intelligence solutions can provide," says Gerald Cohen, Information Builders' chief executive. "Sharing sales and operational metrics on a daily basis gives an organization the ability to address potential problems more quickly, or even anticipate problems before they occur."

LANSA Has Something to Offer Synon Users

Fear not, brave Synon users, for LANSA wants you to know that you can still benefit from its fourth-generation language development tools. Synon is, of course, the name of the company that developed the rival 4GL tool now owned by Computer Associates and sold as Advantage:2E. Several LANSA customers have found that their Synon applications and skills mesh well with LANSA tools and skills.

Taiga Forest Products, for example, saved thousands of hours of development work by migrating its Synon model over to LANSA using Mygreat Technologies' Synon-to-LANSA technology bridge, and doing new development work in Visual LANSA. "We continue to reap the rewards of our Synon investment with each new LANSA application," says Bryan Lindquist, the Canadian company's IT manager.

John Wiley & Sons developed its core OS/400 applications with Synon but had trouble developing a Web-based order entry and inquiry system for customers, LANSA says, so it bought LANSA for the Web, and a working customer interface was built in two weeks. Today, the book publisher continues internal development in Synon but develops all customer-facing applications using LANSA. "There are similarities between Synon and LANSA," says Stephen Foster, John Wiley's associate director of systems development, who attended a LANSA training course.

Teamstudio Rolls Out New Tools for Domino Administrators

Teamstudio last week launched the latest in its long line of tools for the IBM Lotus Notes and Domino environment. Teamstudio for Notes Administrators Suite is intended for use by Domino administrators, and monitors various aspects of Notes and Domino database applications, performs scheduled scans of important databases or directories, and ultimately helps administrators manage changes that impact security or data integrity, the Beverly, Massachusetts, company says. "We already deliver a solid set of these tools to Notes and Domino developers, so it made perfect sense to bring similar tools to administrators," says Mark Dixon, Teamstudio's chief technology officer.

Teamstudio for Notes Administrators Suite has three components, including the Teamstudio Analyzer Server Edition, which analyzes the design of a database application to identify standards violations and potential security problems; the Teamstudio Configurator Server Edition, which searches and replaces almost any text in the documents stored in a database application; and the Teamstudio Validator Server Edition, which reports on areas within database documents that no longer function correctly. The software is available immediately and ranges from $2,000 to $3,000.

Italian Clothes Retailer Says 'Ciao' to Green Screens

Life is nasty, brutish, and short, a British philosopher once said, so why make it worse by subjecting your employees to awkward and ugly 5250 green screens? Along this line of thinking, Bennet, one of Italy's largest clothing retailers, has selected OnWeb, NetManage's screen rejuvenation software. Last week, NetManage announced that Bennet will use OnWeb to create "intuitive" new GUIs for its AS/400 applications, and of course to avoid using those "cumbersome" green screens, which slow training and hurt productivity. Of the host access products that Bennet evaluated, OnWeb was the most intuitive and fastest to implement, says Bennet's Adriano Visconti. "We can accelerate the development of Web-based services with OnWeb without compromising the stability and powerful processing capabilities of our AS/400."

Colorado Billing Firm Selects Web Package from CPU

Health Business Resources has selected CPU Medical Management Systems' Web MED/FM package to manage its account management and billing practice for radiologists in Montrose, Colorado, where it processes about 2,000 bills per month. Web MED/FM is the Web-enabled version of CPU's OS/400-based practice management software, which is used by doctors' offices, radiology departments, and third-party medical billing services.

Jackie Pollard, office manager with Health Business Resources, says the company's previous system was out of date and lacked the functionality they needed. "CPU's Web MED/FM brought us into the 21st century," she said. "We were very excited about CPU's electronic submission and remittance options and their reporting capabilities." Pollard also said CPU's reputation for quality customer service was a factor in the decision.