This month marks the official launch of WebSmart PHP, a new variant of the WebSmart development environment from Business Computer Design Int’l that’s intended to make development of PHP applications easy and intuitive for System i programmers. For a license fee of about $4,000, System i developers can have their PHP generated for them, while they bone up on PHP functions by reading BCD’s extensive documentation.

WebSmart PHP speeds PHP development by using a series of templates and wizards to guide users through the development process, and providing users with detailed descriptions of 5,000 PHP functions, including “instellisense” prompting. As

The word came down from Boise Cascade’s management in May like a ton of pulp: Develop a sophisticated Web-based reporting system that interfaces with multiple host systems, and do it in three weeks. For the folks on BC’s application development team, that deadline seemed next to impossible to meet. However, despite being short a developer, the group persevered and managed to meet its deadline, with a little help from the mrc development tool, m-Power.

Based in Boise, Idaho, Boise Cascade manufacturers a variety of wood products, including plywood, lumber, particleboard, paper, newsprint, and pulp. The company, which employs 10,000 people,

George Cummings, president and CEO of Red Oak Software, describes his company’s Legacy Integrator product, a programmatic integration tool for connecting System i and System z applications with other applications, as a replacement for the world’s fastest human terminal operator. In other words, Legacy Integrator flips through green screens faster than humanly possible. Much faster.

“Our software brings the entire application, or pieces of it, down to the desktop,” Cummings says. “It allows the developer to pick the transactions, capture them, and turn them into callable business objects. Our tool doesn’t capture entire applications by dragging and dropping. You

Five years ago, report distribution was a manual task at Echo, the Lake Zurich, Illinois, manufacturer of chain saws and other outdoor power equipment. Then the company made a paltry investment of a little more than $200 in the an automated spool file distribution utility for the iSeries called SPLTOOL from BVS/Tools, and the company has been reaping the rewards ever since.

As a subsidiary of the Japan-based Kioritz Corporation, Echo makes a range of professional- and consumer-grade outdoor power equipment, ranging from leaf blowers and line trimmers to brush cutters and edgers. Since it was founded 30 years

Arcad Software, the up-and-coming provider of programmers’ tools for the System i platform, recently announced that it’s giving away two pieces of software: a 5250 emulator that plugs into IBM‘s WDSc development environment, and a utility for testing System i objects.

Arcad says its new plug-in, called the Arcad 5250 Emulator for Eclipse, is handy for opening emulation sessions and working with 5250 objects from within the WDSc development environment. Instead of leaving the IDE and opening a separate window, developers can access native 5250 resources without leaving the environment.

Users can open an unlimited number of sessions

Over the last 18 months, English System i systems management software vendor CCSS has focused much of its attention on building its business in the United States and the Far East. Now, the company is shifting its sights to capture more business closer to home, in mainland Europe.

“Last year was significant for us in relocating some of our senior members of staff from the UK to the US,” says Ray Wright, managing director of CCSS. “Coupled with this, we launched CCSS Asia in the Philippines to more directly serve System i customers in the Asia Pacific region. Now, by

The Gaylord Entertainment Company will stay with what it knows in outfitting its newest convention center with IT capabilities. Last week, Agilysys announced that Gaylord will use a suite of software anchored by its i5/OS-based Lodging Management System (LMS) to run its new 40-acre Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, which is scheduled to open in the new community of National Harbor, Maryland, next April.

Gaylord is a big System i customer, as it uses LMS and other Agilysys products to manage its other properties. These include the 2,800-room Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee (site of

Clearview Software International, a software development firm based in Amherst, New Hampshire, recently started selling a new version of its 5250 and Unix emulator for Windows smartphones and PDAs, Co*STAR Mobile Release 2.0. With this release, Clearview has focused on improving user navigation of System i screens from small displays, such as those on PDAs.

According to Rich Lowney, CEO of Clearview Software, the new release of the Co*STAR product, announced Sunday, stemmed from the needs of several customers who requested improvements be made to their PDA user interfaces when connecting to iSeries applications.

“With the additional features, we

Integrated Custom Software recently updated its FormSprint suite of document management software with several new capabilities, including improvements to its PDF archive system, support for the U.S. Postal Service’s new bar codes, and new spool file extraction capabilities.

ICS is based in Connecticut and has sold FormSprint to more than 1,000 customers, who have used the product with every OS/400 and i5/OS-based ERP system imaginable. The company’s offerings handle a range of document-related needs, from merging form-overlays with spool file data to generating MICR and barcode printing to electronic distribution of documents (via hooks into Computer Keyes e-mail and fax

B&L Releases Cost Estimating Wizard

B&L Information Systems, the Bridgeman, Michigan, developer of ERP products for the metal and die-casting industries, unveiled a new cost estimating wizard this month that works with both its i5/OS-based BLIS400 and its Windows-based Odyssey product lines.

The new cost estimating wizard helps customers by allowing them to create their own cost calculations, even for user-defined fields, B&L says. For example, users can create their own calculations for yields, tooling costs, or overhead allocations.

Another benefit of using the new software is being able to define your own screens. The capability to add fields,