by Shannon O'Donnell

If you're one of those folks who just couldn't wait to download Service Pack 4 for the WebSphere Development Studio (5769-WDS) development package, you may be in for a problem if you develop and distribute applications using VisualAge for RPG.

In a December 6 posting to the VARPG newsgroup, IBM Toronto's Clauss Weiss, long recognized as the leader of all things VARPG, said that the WDS Service Pack 4, which was just made available November 14, contains a bug that will cause your communications connection to drop when calling an OS/400 program from a VARPG application.

Apparently only two lines of code in the communications module were changed, but as any programmer will tell you, it doesn't take much to make a program stop working correctly. According to Weiss, the symptom you'll see, besides the communication session dropping, is a socket reset message in the job log.

Weiss goes on to say that IBM Toronto is recommending that you do not use SP4 in your VARPG development environment and that you absolutely do not package the SP4 runtime in your distributables. IBM is working on a fix for this problem, which probably won't be available until the next service pack is released.

If you have already installed SP4 and you are developing applications in VARPG, you should uninstall the new service pack immediately. However, since there is no easy way to uninstall a service pack, your only solution is to uninstall the complete WebSphere Development Studio package, reboot your PC, reinstall WebSphere Development Studio, and then install the last known working service pack, SP3. As long as you don't manually delete your project files using Windows Explorer, or a similar tool, you shouldn't lose any of your work. When WebSphere Development Studio is reinstalled, it will not overlay your existing project files.

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by Dan Burger

When Fortune 500 corporations rely on one company to manage all of their inbound supply chain logistics--including inventory receiving, storage, modularization, packaging, and distribution--that one company feels the pressure to get things right.

TNT Logistics North America is a provider of customized, value-added logistics solutions for Fortune 500 companies in the automotive, tire, retail, electronics, utilities, telecom, fast-moving consumer goods, heavy machinery, and rail industries. Headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, TNT Logistics manages more than 200 contracts within the United States, Canada, and Mexico, providing supply chain management services to its customer base.

To facilitate these processes, TNT maintains more than 11 million square feet of warehouse space throughout North America. These operations encompass not only the enormous volume of goods that TNT must handle for its customers, but also a staggering amount of money that must change hands on a daily basis.

<<Initial Offers>>

More than 10 years ago, TNT purchased a J.D. Edwards ERP package to handle the majority of the company's core business processing. Running on an AS/400, the package's Finance module is responsible for contract management computing. TNT modified the package to fit its exact business model specifications. As a result, this customized application has become an integral component of TNT's daily business practices.

As the company grew--taking on larger, more diverse customers, like Daimler-Chrysler, Compaq, and Home Depot--it became burdened with consolidating customer data and entering this data into the Finance module. More importantly, it realized the process was too laborious on the customer side as well.

"We realized that both we and our client corporations were struggling with the sheer volume of contractual data that resulted from our daily transactions," says Keith Goldsmith, TNT's vice president of technology services. "The process was extremely labor intensive and completely redundant."

Additionally, there was a lack of standardized reporting processes. After customers organized the data on their end, they forwarded it to TNT in various formats, at which point TNT employees reorganized the data and entered it into the legacy application.

<<Coming to Terms>>

Goldsmith and his team conducted extensive vendor research to find a solution that would fit their requirements. After several product demonstrations and customer reference calls, they selected Jacada Ltd. to help extend the functionality of the AS/400 application. "We could not afford to abandon the customized functionality of the legacy processing," says Goldsmith, "but we had to enable a more efficient alternative than our traditional means of data entry."

TNT was invested in client/server- and AS/400-based application development, and was looking to go to the Web without rewriting a lot of code. It employed a large staff of developers, which represented a sizeable investment in the AS/400 skill set.

"The Jacada Interface Server was attractive for a number of reasons," adds Carey Caile, TNT's manager of technology services. "It provided a very robust development environment. We didn't want just a screen- scraper; that's not a development environment. With the Jacada server, we could do Java and HTML and know we could add extensions later."

Caile says the TNT team was impressed with the Java source code generation, which helped add functionality on the back end. TNT has a client/server group with experience in developing in all languages, and Java development was going on before bringing in Jacada. "The solution offered our organization strategic flexibility that is rarely seen in the proprietary products on the market today," Caile said.

Several of TNT's developers were sent to training at Jacada, where they built applications on the Interface Server. John Pennypacker, senior systems engineer, described the training as "a good simulation of how the product would work in a real environment. We built applications and working programs as the week went along. It was pretty easy to get started [back at TNT] after learning the nuances."

During the deployment, TNT upgraded some client browsers to handle the Java applet, because the Jacada Interface Server delivers the Contract Manager's Electronic Desktop (CMED) application as a Java thin-client to TNT's client user base.

Feedback from the user base was encouraging. According to Caile, it included many useful ways to provide information to the customers, as well as process information from them. "For the first time, everybody had the same screens, which were editable and standardized," Caile said.

Transitioning from green screens with a lot of complexity to something far easier created enthusiasm among the IT staff. TNT began to explore other possibilities for enhancing their customers' experience. Using the source code generated by the Jacada Interface Server, TNT wrote Java extensions to third-party applications that provided additional functionality.

Caile said the team integrated a graphing application with the CMED system to enable users to view the data in a more visual format. "We brought in a Jacada consulting team to get us started with the extensions," says Caile. "After that, our internal developers were able to do the work themselves. Basically it allowed TNT to alter the functionality of the green screen without changing the green screen."

"The new intranet application immediately impacted operational efficiency," says Goldsmith. "Internally, we have been able to repurpose the administrative personnel who used to key in the customer data. At times, we do have to get involved in the process, when there is a customer question, but for the most part, those people can now focus on tasks that are much more value-added than before. Externally, the customers are very pleased. The Java interface is easy to use, and reporting is far faster than it was before."

<<Amendments>>

Compared with HTML, the Java applet is much more robust in an intranet environment. However, Java is a thicker client and is therefore somewhat slower. And where there are firewalls on the customer's end, it becomes even slower.

That's why TNT chose to give its Internet-using customers the thinnest client possible: HTML. "Java and HTML are two main options for us," Caile said. Whereas the Java thin client is quite manageable for the CMED intranet deployment, TNT realized Java was not the most desirable client language in every situation, particularly when using the Internet.

"We understood that when dealing with Internet deployments," continued Caile, "we will have a fundamental lack of control over bandwidth and the various types of devices that the users might employ. The Jacada Interface Server provides our organization with alternatives, so that we can concurrently deliver various client types to disparate sets of users, depending on both user and device requirements."

Employing the Internet as a delivery mechanism, TNT deployed a lightweight HTML thin client to several customers for access to inventory information. The back-end logic is part of the warehousing module within TNT's ERP system. Customers can access the system to check inventory levels within TNT's warehouses. They can then use this information to quickly determine the amount of product that must be ordered.

TNT is working to extend its i2 Technologies Transportation Manager 400 functionality with an HTML thin client, as well. When completed, this Internet application will allow customers to actually create and track inventory shipments on their own. All of the Jacada applications are integrated into TNT's Vector21 Transportation Management System.

<<Sign Off >>

The implementation of Jacada Interface Server has eliminated many manual-intensive, information-swapping steps for both TNT and its customers, while increasing functionality for its users. Specifically, it has reduced steps in such areas as inventory tracking, purchase order creation, and the running reports on order status and shipments. One of the major benefits is that it allows operations people to manage the warehouse rather than do customer service.

"From an IT perspective," Caile says, "the Java-based system gives us the flexibility to create apps on any platform we want to, so we can connect to other systems relatively easily."

Handling supply chain logistics for 200 to 300 customers is a 24/7 responsibility, Goldsmith said. "For our customers, we provide services that are critical to their daily operations," he said.

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