Midrange Stuff, OS/400 Edition

You've probably heard the story before. A company with older AS/400 applications gradually invests in a Windows NT infrastructure, and before you know it, Windows boxes start replacing the AS/400s. Often the AS/400 types within the company, lacking the proper tools, skills, and clout to bring their systems into the modern age, are powerless to stop the momentum of change, to a predictable end. But there is one iSeries manager who is successfully fighting Windows creep and actually making headway in reversing the damage.

This particular organization (which asked not to be identified) is located in Illinois and is one of the largest fleet-management companies in the country, with 175 employees managing more than 70,000 vehicles for dozens of companies. ''The company's investment in IBM midrange technology dates back at least to 1985, and today it runs a mix of J.D. Edwards WorldSoftware and homegrown RPG software to handle its internal finances and fleet-management billing.

However, there used to be many more applications running on the company's AS/400. Over the years, the company had gradually moved applications off the AS/400, including a customer service application, a "data-crunching" program, and others. This is where David Gillespie, the company's new iSeries manager, enters the picture.

Gillespie joined the company about a year ago and was not impressed with what he saw. He describes how his predecessor was complacent about keeping up with IBM's iSeries developments and did little to fight the growing perception that OS/400 is a dying platform. An example of the type of "antiquated development" taking place on the AS/400, Gillespie says, was the flat files the company still used for its homegrown billing system. While flat files may have been the state-of-the-art 20 years ago, today they are considered a significant hindrance to future development, compared with today's powerful relational databases.

Gillespie watched as one RPG "data-crunching" application was taken off the AS/400, rewritten in Java, and deployed to a Windows NT server. When the program was still on the AS/400, it would take about six hours to run the job. After it was moved to Windows, it took 10 hours. "That was a sign to me that we took the wrong steps to try to accomplish a business goal," Gillespie says. "They tried to make changes to the way the job was running, but instead of doing it on the appropriate platform, with the appropriate tools, like RPG, they took it off and used Java on NT."

Soon after Gillespie joined the company, he received a memo from another manager in the IT department that explained much of what he was seeing. The memo confirmed that the company's policy was to move AS/400 applications to Windows boxes. But Gillespie, who had worked with the AS/400 for years and understood its unique properties and capabilities, wouldn't just sit back and watch the migrations. He decided to take an active role in explaining to management what was wrong with the current situation.

"The introductory memo struck a nerve," Gillespie says. "They're trying to move applications off the AS/400. I took a lot of it to heart. The AS/400 users are the most loyal and diehard people on the face of the earth, because of their experiences with the box. I fall into that category. I know the power of the machine.

"Part of what I set out to do was to educate the other managers and executives on the power of the machine and, to drive it home, we took on these initiatives, to demonstrate the capabilities of the machine."

Gillespie realized that actually doing what he was proposing wouldn't be easy. The managers weren't about to hand him the reigns to the company's data center because he felt strongly about something. If he was going to get the funds to do the type of forward-looking development he knew the OS/400 platform was capable of, he would have to start at the bottom and prove his point to the managers.

"In the bell curve of life, we had hit the bottom," he says. "So we started building the infrastructure, moving applications as needed to RPG IV and rebuilding the back-end databases so they would be relational and normalized. We we're starting the uphill climb, but 'starting to see the results."

As the grunt work of normalizing the back-end database continued, Gillespie started his second project: developing a new graphical interface for the billing portion of the fleet management system that runs on the AS/400. Of course, there are probably hundreds of different ways to do this, and at least as many packaged screen-scraper tools that could have filled the bill. But instead of spending money on a third-party tool, Gillespie decided to stick with the latest IBM tool for this need, and that would be WebFacing.

The fact that Gillespie chose IBM's tool is significant because it demonstrates the do-more-with-less attitude, and an acceptance to follow IBM's lead in application development issues. His company already had WebSphere Application Server 3.5 loaded onto the AS/400. IBM provided WebSphere Application Server 3.5 basically free of charge to all AS/400 shops for a time. So since WebFacing uses WebSphere Application Server and the company already had that, Gillespie decided they might as well try it out. "We were in a position where we could not be spending dollars for technology we weren't going to use," Gillespie says, adding that he didn't want to introduce a proprietary scripting language into his development domain, choosing instead to stick with the nearly ubiquitous JavaScript that WebFacing uses.

Gillespie was amazed that the WebFacing project went as smoothly as it did. "WebFacing tweaking and deployment of the entire system took approximately one hour of work," he says. The WebFacing product worked so well out of the box, it was hard to believe it was that easy."

Today, Gillespie and his developers are working on a new project: Using IBM's CODE/400 development tools to build an iSeries application that will allow employees to validate orders for fleet management. The Java application will replace a process that involved hand-keying data from Excel spreadsheets into the billing system.

While Gillespie is going forward with Java development and is even evaluating IBM's Eclipse tools for future projects, he realizes Java isn't the answer to all of the company's problems. "Where it makes sense to do RPG development, we're going to continue to do that," he says. "High transaction applications, such as billing, will stay in RPG, because RPG is a better tool for that."

In the future, Gillespie would like to see more application development taking place on the iSeries, and maybe even bring some of the Windows applications back onto the iSeries. That will require convincing the executives that the iSeries is up for the job, something that won't happen overnight.

"Executive perceptions are slowly changing," he says. "There are certain things we want to use the iSeries for, and some things we don't. The executives have been open, because of WebFacing and what we've done with this project. We've had very positive feedback--especially from the Java development manager. Nobody understood you could run these different Java application servers" on the iSeries.

Gillespie wouldn't have gotten this far without a team of developers behind him that is eager to learn a new programming language. "Some developers have gone out of their way to learn Java so they can be part of this process that's happening here. It's really exciting."

When Gillespie arrived a year ago, he found an AS/400 shop that is not much different from most. The programmers were content to use tools and technologies like RPG III and flat files, which are stable and do their job, like the AS/400 was for 12 great years. He also discovered the cruel twist of fate that only those who know the AS/400 can fully understand: The same stability and technological scalability that made the AS/400 the most popular business computer of all time was also shielding the company's AS/400 staff from innovating and looking to the future. And sometime in the last 12 months, Gillespie also discovered that maybe this is what makes the iSeries different from the AS/400.

"I shook things up in this department--it's been positive, and enthusiasm has been growing. The new tools, the technology, and the growth opportunity have really been good for the team," Gillespie says. "And now we have an iSeries. We stress that in every communication: 'This is an iSeries, capable of doing XYZ, rather than an AS/400, which you perceive as an older machine.' We're really taking it to heart."