ASNA Selects Beta Sites for Visual RPG-Visual Studio .NET Product

by Dan Burger

In what is likely to be the company's most important product development in its 20-year history, ASNA has taken another step toward the release of its RPG-based development environment for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003. Last week, the company released the first beta versions of ASNA Visual RPG, or AVR, that are designed to generate Microsoft intermediate language code and connect to iSeries servers through the .NET Framework. The company has set August 24 as the date for general availability of the product.

AVR for Visual Studio .NET is expected to gain a good deal of attention among RPG developers who prefer to use their existing programming skills (rather than taking on Java) while moving into technologies such as Web services and object programming. This potentially offers the capability to become productive quicker by using a familiar language, core competencies, and easy-to-use tools.

Sources at ASNA say the binary output of the AVR for .NET compiler produces verifiable, type-safe executables that are compatible with .NET executables, created with .NET intrinsic languages such as VB.NET and C#.

The product has been in the internal testing process for more than a year and has been in the ASNA product pipeline for two years.

ASNA faced a complex development process with AVR for .NET. Microsoft is, no doubt, happy to have companies like ASNA work to hook back-end applications to .NET, and it provided assistance to accomplish that part of the equation. But ASNA and other vendors with similar missions involving other languages are pretty much on their own to figure out how to write the front ends in anything other than Visual Basic and C#, both of which are Microsoft's own languages.

ASNA uses an Active Server Pages (ASP) approach to build front-end applications that look familiar to RPG programmers. Integrating these technologies has been technically daunting and time-consuming for ASNA.

ASNA has developed AVR for .NET so that programmers with RPG skills will find it easier to write those apps, or at least easier than if they had to learn Java. Without the capability to write the apps in a familiar language, a .NET product loses a great deal of its appeal for those programmers who are not interested in Visual Basic or C#. If they have to write front-end applications in VB or C#, they might be inclined to pass on .NET entirely.

AVR for .NET imports both RPG/400 and RPG IV, and ASNA supports nearly all RPG op codes and built-in functions. AVR for .NET can also import RPG from third-party vendors such as California Software and Lattice.

ASNA's announcement coincided (not by accident) with Microsoft's christening of Windows Server 2003, the nucleus of the .NET strategy, and Visual Studio .NET 2003. The side-by-side April 24 introductions brought the typical Microsoft dog-and-pony show for the media. Of course, much attention was focused on Visual Studio.NET, which gives developers a package of tools designed to build applications with an expanding list of programming languages. The tools and the new servers are billed as being better-suited to take advantage of applications that adhere to Web services standards. Windows Server 2003 marks the first time the .NET Framework is integrated with the Windows platform infrastructure.

In the iSeries market Visual Studio.NET is expected to compete on pretty much an equal basis with IBM's preferred environment, Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE). Visual Studio.NET is available in three versions: Professional, Enterprise Developer, and Enterprise Architect. In order to use AVR for .NET, one of the above-mentioned versions is required.

"We've never been as excited about the opportunities for any of our many products over the years as we are for AVR for Visual Studio .NET," said ASNA president Anne Ferguson. "We have a waiting list of existing customers anxious for the delivery of AVR for Visual Studio .NET and have many prospects ready to make the switch from other technologies."

ASNA began developing visual programming and systems software for the midrange community in 1982. In its more recent history, ASNA has specialized in Web, Windows, and .NET Framework development environments for the iSeries and for Microsoft Windows NT/2000 Server. Its AVR application development environment and DataGate data access tool have gained a notable level of acceptance in the midrange market. The company is a Microsoft Visual Studio Integration Partner, an IBM Tools Network Partner, and an Advanced Tier Member of IBM's PartnerWorld for Developers.

ASNA has a Web page where additional details regarding AVR for .NET can be found. Microsoft also has a Web page for the .NET Framework.

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