ASNA User Conference Big on
Web Apps

by Dan Burger

Programmers and managers from the ASNA fold, and those who are thinking of joining the family, will be congregating March 6 through 8 at the fourth annual user conference known as ASNApalooza.

The conference takes place deep in the heart of Texas--San Antonio, to be specific. For information on registration and accommodations, visit the ASNA Web site: www.palooza.asna.com.

ASNA has built a solid reputation with its Web and Windows development products that include ASNA Visual RPG, Acceler8DB, DataGate/400, and the ASNA Database Toolbox. Its strength lies in client/server software that leverages the capabilities of RPG and DB2/400 to the Web and Windows.

The biggest buzz surrounding ASNA in the past year came from its announcement at ASNApalooza 2001 that the company would be developing a product suite for Microsoft's .NET thrust. ASNA calls it AVR for .NET. At the upcoming conference, ASNA will present a clearly defined picture of what ASNA's .NET is going to be. Trimmed to a one-line description, you could say it will transfer existing RPG skills into the .NET world to build Web (primarily) and Window applications.

Roger Pence, ASNA's director of education and training, says development of AVR for .NET is at "a pretty healthy beta stage." According to Pence, ASNApalooza will provide opportunities for customers to use the existing beta product. "The development environment is hooked up. We have the language pretty much done, including the compiler, and are integrating that into Visual Studio.NET," says Pence. Expectations are that the product will have a "middle-to-late-summer" release.

ASNA plans conference sessions with the goal of demystifying (at a high level) .NET and many Web- related technologies, such as Web Services and SOAP.

Although .NET will be a big part of ASNApalooza, most of the technical content is focused on ASNA's existing products.

At the top of that list is the company's cross-platform database support software called DataGate for SQL Server. It allows applications to work natively and intrinsically with Microsoft SQL Server databases. ASNA says it will deliver DataGate for SQL Server within the next several weeks, just in time to make the list of "existing products" in customers' hands before ASNApalooza. ASNA describes its newest product as a solution for customers looking to write a single Windows or Web application that--at the flip of a switch-- connects to an AS/400 or an SQL Server. The benefit is that it doesn't care what database is under it.

Pence says users don't need to learn anything new to put SQL Server under their applications. Not only does this provide a new host for the applications, it is potentially a less costly host for many users, particularly for small businesses. "We have a lot of ISV [independent software vendor] customers who want to sell their applications to smaller shops that don't want an AS/400," says Pence. "We also have a lot of our bread-and- butter AS/400 accounts wanting SQL Server."

Projections for ASNApalooza attendance figure at approximately 175 developers, with 80 to 85 percent of those developers representing the United States. There were 140 developers at last year's conference.

Although the name of the conference sounds more like a rock concert, ASNApalooza is a technical conference that focuses on AVR programming and development team leadership. This year ASNA says it is increasing its emphasis on hands-on lab sessions. A sampling of session topics includes AVR subfile techniques; AVR for .NET and Visual Studio.Net integration; and creating DLLs with AVR. The management sessions will cover such topics as project management, change management, and marketing and selling apps. There will also be open-panel discussions featuring the ASNA development staff.

The keynote speaker will be Doug Fulmer, IBM's Worldwide Segment Manager of Application Development Tools and Middleware. Fulmer is expected to deliver a state-of-the-iSeries report highlighting what's new and why IBM is optimistic about the server's future.

ASNA reports that 2001 was financially the best year in the company's history. Much of its success is being attributed to a market in which customers are moving applications to the Web, but also given credit is an increase in the number ASNA distributors worldwide.