Midrange Stuff, OS/400 Edition

OS/400 shops looking to incorporate XML documents into their business processes may want to check out new software that Patrick Townsend & Associates started shipping last week. Townsend's new product, Alliance XML/400, is a Java program that automatically converts data between XML and the iSeries DB2 format, allowing OS/400 shops to interface with their customers and trading partners in XML, the new common data language, while keeping the data unaltered in their tried-and-true DB2 database.

Extensible Markup Language, or XML, is an extremely flexible data description language standardized by the World Wide Web Consortium that is widely heralded as the new lingua franca of data. The beauty of XML lies in the fact that it's self-describing, allowing anybody to tailor XML documents to fit individual business and application needs, while also abiding by a standard that readily allows others to receive and understand content regardless of the computer platform or interface. If there is such a thing as a "universal business adapter" for documents (like in the humorous IBM commercials making the rounds), it is XML.

The software gives OS/400 shops the capability to incorporate XML documents into their business processes and applications. Alliance XML/400 can be used to create programs that perform real-time or batch translation of XML data, either through the product itself or by calling the Alliance XML/400 API.

Alliance XML/400 provides tools for both the mapping and the translation of DB2/400 into XML, and vice versa. To create an XML document from a DB2/400 database file, Alliance XML/400 can automatically generate an XML translation map from your externally described physical or logical database files; no DDS source code is required. From the map, users can customize the XML document to fit their business needs by adding XML tags. Similarly, for incoming XML documents, the product guides users through mapping the XML data elements to the database elements. No programming is necessary to create and update maps, Pat Townsend says, but familiarity with DB2/400 and XML is required.

Pat Townsend says Alliance XML/400 takes the complexity out of XML translation by automatically detecting DB2/400 database field types and performing the correct translation, to and from the XML standard. For outgoing XML documents, the product's data transformation engine converts all OS/400 character and numeric data types into the correct XML data types, while for incoming XML documents, it converts XML into zoned, packed, binary, and floating point formats in the DB2/400 database, the company says.

Any XML standard can be used with Alliance XML/400, including commonly used ones such as cXML (for commerce), ebXML (for e-business), cbXML (for common business documents), Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), and XML/EDI, which lets users send EDI documents over the Web as XML, as well as any new XML formats developed by the user. The product includes the latest Xerces parsers for Java with DOM support, which ensures proper validation of the XML documents.

Alliance XML/400 comes with standard and secure versions of client and server HTTP programs for sending and receiving XML documents, and integrates with IBM's AS/400 Digital Certificate Manager (DCM) for native AS/400 security and certificate management. Error handling management and logging is provided by the software, as well as support for Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) traps. The product also includes a full SNTP e-mail client for sending error notifications and alerts, or even for sending full XML documents through e-mail.

Patrick Townsend, president of Patrick Townsend & Associates, says his product provides business benefits to OS/400 shops that are embarking on XML projects and can't shell out big bucks for experienced XML programmers. "We set out to make XML projects easy to accomplish without the need for expensive translation tools or hard-to-find programming talent," Townsend says. "Alliance XML/400 provides a productivity boost for AS/400 XML projects, reduces the time and cost of delivery, and is affordable for even the very small enterprise."

The company includes two step-by-step tutorials with Alliance XML/400. One tutorial shows users how to use an Alliance map to translate a sample invoice in XML into a comparable invoice in DB2/400 format. Another tutorial shows the user how to create an XML-based purchase order from existing purchase orders in a DB2/400 database. Both tutorials include all the required XML maps, the company says.

Alliance XML/400 is available now and requires OS/400 V4R4 or higher. Licenses for the software are tier-based and range from $2,500 for P05 servers to $7,500 for P50 servers. Free 30-day trials are available for download at www.patownsend.com.