Pate 62 PO WEEKNAPPLICATION DEVELOPMENT Evolving SAA Strategy Will Have a Place for the AS/400 offered by Digital Eguipment Corp., This is the fi- | Wang Laboratories Inc. and Data General nal part of a se- — Corp. It supports word processing, elec- ries on IBM's tronic mail, calendar management and midrange com- simple "directories" (or personal puter family, databases) in an integrated software the AS/400, a package. The initial version, announced pivotal part of. in June 1988, is adeguate for its task but, IBM's strategy little more. A greatly improved version of to provide great- | SAA Office was announced in May. ly enhanced con: Office automation was dead as a tech- sistency and nological niche by the end of 1986. In its connectivity place emerged a reguirement to manage across multiple — information exchange throughout the supported envi enterprise. Business information comes ronments. from a variety of sources and takes a An important variety of forms—data, text, graphics, 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- 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 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. AS/400 will participate fully in the evolving SAA strategy. It will offer SAA capability to midrange systems place AS/400 Office as the primary of- fice-support, package for the AS/400. PC-Support. PC Support is a PC 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- MNE 26, 1989 tured pr mming notation. These ratiiieh 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 HI 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 NI 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 screen 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- and will A a parter age information in a cooperative- zme of intelligent workstations. processing environment. [t also has a Application Packages high level of hardware independence, jo ost applications for tne AS/400 are which is critical for cooperative pro- EN a peckagee A high-level instruction set defin žemo probably has the ca poje lie architecture o" ware ir) applica! i AJ kobila zvallabje About 8,000 application have been developed for Meaview ONO ie ; about 8,000 application s ga the System/ 8X and AS/400 i view of the network and treat it ie been velja poekagca kave efe envtronments, but there are onljy - single "soft machine," independent of AS/400 en t, a hundred serious ones from i the underlying del oe few hundred serious a a, : ' vendorS. — tem, hardware ane 9 k ea ages from well-established Most. ea m — tion. It provides a kriki de applications have been migrated from Volče ani je of IBM's vision of the Cooperati ena te vOO ana Sre a tla support these forma > ote? must. |. jty funetlons, including terminal emuja, ene eYirornent nee i tion, file transf« eserver functions two weeks, 1 will begin s pddition to application packages, AO A a00 OI ge Will every. and prite se EI ons how to plan for the transition KI ma vrhieh include IBM AS/AOŠ pons, trial of the product. Dodaj fre usoljnom. Synorv2E is the most widely — as IBM San ua "tVironment, such Su; tiy, IBM announced i highly regarded computer-aid- AA. and general-pur- — office 8 major new | ed software e: eering a pila! im JO po jakni is designed. — midrange a ed rne IBM — The James Martin Producitvii a Lid.of London, LARO pa m vironments. OfficeVilon support do both the design and the generation ot. teri tion service updated guar. pect Com; ment filing, "application in a top-dov S available through Hi, from Ne o a support and calendar Ni decision proach to application phone oo jeni MV oinosna inc, vi poješ These Lools, described below system is designed to provide in tool and an action-dia. 2492-1240. For infor. Compliant with SAA, although sono are See unedons that can be run co o Sre editor Create highvlevel data mod. — pogonom seminars, please contaci (i Moving in that directi some are AS/400s, PCs and Fun on els and funetion defini 5 the United States and in o Ho OTTice. AS/400 OfTice i IBM s emo be ee nin tne Ca a ApPlica- — dependent of implementatjott duo Sology Transfer Institute, ZA JOGE S, the integrated office products — system ue into an OfceVislon. < be a a ene objects can. 8305. In poka oe. 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