PKS Software Takes an AX to Interactive Workloads

by Alex Woodie

Getting a true graphical user interface and eliminating dependence on interactive workloads are important issues at many OS/400 shops these days. Thanks to IBM's pricing scheme for the use of the 5250 data stream, there is plenty of incentive to do both. PKS Software recently introduced a new OS/400 software product called AX/ware ServerBuilder 400 that can turn interactive workloads into batch workloads, and deliver an XML-based, platform-independent GUI along the way.

PKS Software is a German-American company based in Raleigh, North Carolina, that is best known for AX/ware, a tool for migrating OS/400 applications to Microsoft Windows and Unix platforms. With the May release of ServerBuilder, PKS Software is delivering its first product aimed at helping companies that wish to remain on the OS/400 platform.

ServerBuilder consists of several components, including a middleware layer that sits on the OS/400 server, a GUI Builder for customizing the default GUI that ServerBuilder delivers, and a Universal Client that sits on a Windows PC and is used when delivering ServerBuilder applications in the client/server format. ServerBuilder also supports the delivery of HTML or JavaScript for rendering data in Web browsers, in which case a Java-compatible Web application server, such as IBM's WebSphere Application Server or Tomcat, will need to be installed on the OS/400 server or other attached server. The GUI Builder delivered with ServerBuilder is the same screen editor that PKS Software ships with AX/ware.

To re-architect your host OS/400 program into a client/server application that uses batch workload processing instead of interactive workload processing, you're going to need access to the application's source code. ServerBuilder analyzes that source code and looks for how display calls are made. It then automatically inserts a line of code into the source code that tells the application to direct Web browser- and PC client-based requests to an API, which directs the ServerBuilder middleware layer on the OS/400 server to display data using XML instead of the 5250 data stream. ServerBuilder automatically does this during the development process, and a recompile of the source code will be necessary. The software does not affect green-screen users who wish to continue to access their applications using dumb terminals and allows them to continue to do so.

The ServerBuilder approach has several advantages over traditional screen scraping, says PKS Software's Michael Byrne. First, because ServerBuilder creates an "object model" of the OS/400 user interface that is independent of the 5250 data stream, changes made to the DDS will have no effect on the ServerBuilder user interface, he says. Also, enhancements made to the GUI automatically apply to both the Windows desktop and the Web browser user interfaces.

ServerBuilder got an early workout at Integrated Distribution Solutions, a Pennsylvania food service software company that had already been a PKS Software customer. IDS used AX/ware to port its RPG-based software suite, called Power Enterprise, to AIX and Windows NT in 2000. Since then, the company has grown to have more than 800 customers and is now the largest software provider in its niche of the food distribution business.

IDS already offered its customers browser-based access with the standard OS/400 implementation of Power Enterprise using IBM's Host On-Demand product. However, the company ran into a situation with Host On-Demand that is common among all screen scrapers that rely on the 5250 datastream--namely, the business logic was tied to the user interface. This meant that changing one thing required changing the other. "It really became a maintenance nightmare," says Noel Sheridan, the company's executive vice president.

So the company started looking at products such as ServerBuilder that could effectively separate the user interface from the business logic. ""Sheridan led the search for a suitable candidate and found that the majority of products on the market could provide that capability for a Web client, but not for a Web and a Windows client. The fact that ServerBuilder could provide GUIs for Web and Windows clients weighed in its favor at IDS.

Also, because ServerBuilder uses the same GUI Builder as the AX/ware migration suite, IDS was able to reuse the screens it had developed with AX/ware two years earlier. In fact, it could use the same libraries used by the AIX and Windows implementations of Power Enterprise, which was a powerful factor in PKS Software's favor. "It was really nice," Sheridan says. "I can sit here at my terminal, and I can't tell if the back end is running on Windows or AIX or OS/400." The ServerBuilder-powered version of Power Enterprise, Version 3.0, is due out this August.

The fact that ServerBuilder blends Windows, XML, and Java technologies provides some degree of insurance from the winds of technology change. Sheridan said that IDS is currently evaluating whether to adopt the .NET or the Java strategy for the next generation of computing. "But in the meantime, we're getting what we want: one source code that can be used for multiple platforms, multiple databases, and multiple user interfaces."

ServerBuilder is available now. Software license fees range from about $15,000 to $30,000. For more information, visit www.axware.com.

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