MENT JUNE 26, 1989 ENE: Evolving SAA Strategy Will Have a Place for the AS/400 nal part of a se- ries om IBM s midrange com- puter family, the AS/400, a pivotal part of IBM s strategy to provide great: [y enhanced, con- sistency and connectivituy across multiple supported envi- An important strategic goal of IBM and other vendors is the provision of a consistent applica- tion-development environment, across its major product lines. Today, program- mers often have to use a different set of languages, tools, editors and develop- ment procedures for each computer en- vironment. This makes it difficult to de- | MARTIN. ' velop applications that can be run on a | number of computers without the need | for redesign and reprogramming. As a solution to this problem, IBM in- troduced Systems Application Architec- ture (SAA), which is an integrated com- puting environment supporting a Com- mon User Interface (CUA), Common Programming Interface (CPI) and Com- mon Communications Support (CCS). The CPI permits users to develop appli- cations that are independent of the un- derlying system architecture. As shown in the graph, the CPI includes a common zem m" ona offered by Digital Eguipment Corp,, Wang Laboratories Inc. and Data General Corp. It supports word processing, elec- tronic mail, calendar management and simple "directories" (or personal databases) in an integrated software package. The initial version, announced in June 1988, is adeguate for its task but little more. A greatly improved version of SAA Office was announced in May. Office automation was dead as a tech- nological niche by the end of 1986. In its place emerged a reguirement to manage information exchange throughout the enterprise. Business information comes from a variety of sources and takes a variety of forms—data, text, graphics, place AS/400 Office as the primary of- fice-support package for the AS/400. PC-Support. PC Support is a PO con: nectivity tool introduced by IBM in 1984 as part of its Office Systems Family of strategic office products for the Sys- tem/36, System/38 and System/370-com- patible mainframes. A much-enhanced version of PC Support/38 was migrated to the AS/400. PC Support has achieved nearly uni- versal acceptance among System/36, System/38 and AS/400 users as the method of choice for integrating IBM- compatible microcomputers and IBM midrange systems. It offers one-stop shopping for most important connectiv- tured programming notation. | These features accommodate rapid ap- plication development through succes- sive iterations of prototypes while main: taining design integrity. When the design process is complete, Synon/2E automati: cally generates corresponding RPG II or COBOL program source code, as well as the source code needed to create associ- ated AS/400 data objects. A strategic move by Synon Ltd. is the decision to support IBM s SAA stan: dards in Synon/2E applications. But, Synon/2E's SAA support amounts to conformance to CUA standards for key- board usage and screen layouts. Genesis V. Genesis V is an application generator developed for the System/38 and later migrated to the AS/400 plat- form by Sofbro Ltd. The product auto- mates the generation of interactive RPG programs based on a database defini- tion and functional specifications de- fined by the programmer. Unigue among AS/400 application generators, Genesis V uses rules in a knowledge base to di- rect the translation of these specifica- tions into RPG code. LANSA. LANSA is a fourth generation language (4GL) developed for the Sys- tem/38 and modified to be suitable for use on the AS/400 by Aspect Computing of Hawthorn, Victoria, in Australia. LANSA consists of an optional data-mod- eling module, a comprehensive data dic- tionary and a fourth-generation language. The LANSA 4GL is consistent with the AS/400 Command Language syntax and relies on the AS/400 command-pro- cessing facilities to prompt for and vali- date LANSA command statements. LANSA statements generate RPG [II code as well as display sereen and re- port data description specifications. - Metaview. Metaview is an applica- tion-development, tool for cooperative- processing environments. It includes in- tegrated Support for data, text and im- age information in a cooperative- processing environment. It also has a cel pos! of hardware independence zhicA Is critical for rativ« koor, Cooperative pro- set of high-level languages, procedural languages, application generators, expert Systems, database interfaces, dialogue interfaces and communications inter- faces. Applications that consistently use these services can run on any system supported by SAA. The AS/400 will participate fully in the evolving SAA strategy. It will offer SAA Capability to midrange systems and will act as the control point for Broups of intelligent workstations. Application Packages Most applications for the AS/400 are in the form of application packages, John Avakian which are not compliant with SAA. Th A high-level instruction set defines a AS/400 probably has the largest base of SITE — UoPerative-processing architecture on zajetja application products available i) PA JA Mesna Pp nami can be built. n any commercial computer. Alth EEA WE .-avlew applications see this high- about 8,000 application packages Aa ina AS, eni m view of the network and treat it as - Pk a, ray PRE MAJU n li single soft machine," independent. of k 9 JEV MU ao the underlying details of opera ting sys- icati —560EDEAN EN o | Raj A and network configura- ishe0 | (di S, a pe 4 provides a striking endorse: applications been migrated f | of IBMSs visio; abs orsement he AS/400'« nom rom || voi ei eh ne: z on of the coopera the žno A s predecessors, the Sys- ea ime new office must i: ityf unetions, including terminal emula. TEA environment. tive-pro- in addition to application packs IBM ships AS/400 Office with. tion, file transfer, fileserver functions h ijj Tech- CPI Predeti u,, 94 implementation details. 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