The tool allows easy access to existing RPG and COBOL applications while providing RPG and COBOL programmers a way to employ existing skills to build entirely new mobile solutions.
The growth in mobile computing, and the need for applications that support it, are on the rise. The iPhone, iPad, and Android operating system have ported transactional computing into the pocket and purse.
In a recent IBM survey of more than 2000 IT developers and specialists from around the world, more than half said they expect mobile application development to surpass application development on all other traditional platforms within the next five years. LANSA is making it easier for RPG and COBOL developers to ride this wave with this week's introduction of aXes Mobile.
aXes Mobile, shipped as part of the standard aXes eBusiness suite of modernization products, is being made available to all current aXes licensees at no charge. It automatically converts the 5250 data stream to display in a browser, and it communicates with the mobile device to provide mobile access to virtually any IBM i server-based application, according to LANSA.
LANSA aXes, a technology that formerly was owned by Arterial Software of Melbourne, Australia, provides browser-based access to 5250 applications on the fly. The LANSA aXes eBusiness suite consists of three software modules: aXes Terminal Server, aXes Data Explorer Server, and aXes Spool File Server.
For anyone used to developing applications for a 5250 terminal, the obvious question when considering mobile access is: How do you squeeze all that information onto a little tiny smartphone screen and—more to the point—why would you wish to?
LANSA is taking a bottom-line approach to mobile access and development of mobile applications. Greg Best, LANSA's vice president of business development, spoke with MC Press Online, pointing out that providing mobile access to RPG or COBOL applications running on IBM i should involve discrete decisions surrounding the types of users who can profitably benefit and the specific application features these users might need.
"It is important to understand that delivering a complete replica of an existing 5250-based application to a mobile wireless device and a mobile audience may not be practical," says Best. "Doing so might deliver very little return on investment. The fact is most users utilize only 20 percent of an application anyway, and so you generally don't have to modernize everything. Eventually you may want to, but you don't have to initially.
"When you start getting into mobile devices," says Best, "having data entry on your iPhone is probably not what you're going to do; it may not bring the biggest bang for the buck." Rendering a 5250 "real-estate" screen that's probably busy to begin with onto an iPad, iPhone, or Android device is likely not going to be "the best use of your time," he says. Nor are the users likely to be satisfied with the results.
Instead, developers will need to work up a plan and think through the benefits of mobile access. "You may want to select pieces of your existing application that make sense for your users and port them to mobile devices," he says. Foremost in mind is obtaining a business benefit from providing mobile access.
"This is not about, can I keep up with the Joneses. This is about who in my business is on the road and wants access to real-time transactional information," says Best.
What aXes does is give developers an opportunity to take their existing RPG or COBOL AS/400 applications—or the user-relevant features of them—and modernize them to fit onto the smaller screen of a mobile device.
It also gives the RPG or COBOL programmer, with little additional training, the opportunity to write a new program with mobile access in mind. You can use existing RPG and COBOL skills, write the application in the language with which you're familiar, put aXes over it to add the functionality that makes sense using radial buttons, drop downs, and other Web enhancements, and deploy it on a mobile device.
LANSA cites the example of a service repair application as one that could be written in RPG to communicate via aXes Mobile with a variety of mobile wireless devices and provide enhanced efficiencies as a result. Best says the steps are simple: the developer merely designs and writes the program as usual in RPG or COBOL but takes the smaller mobile screen size into account. The developer then lays out or paints each screen using aXes eXtensions to add controls like drop downs, group boxes, hyperlinks, images, checkboxes, or calendars. He then adds buttons with scripts to control functions, alter the position of fields on the screen, and insert bars, stripes, colors, and color gradients to enhance the appearance. There is a dial-in type of template in aXes Mobile to control the screen-size output.
Thus, aXes Mobile gives mobile users access to existing RPG or COBOL applications on IBM i, but it also allows the developer to design and develop completely new mobile applications using existing RPG or COBOL skills. One of the best things about the development tool, according to LANSA, is that it is simple to use and easy to learn. The company provides a comprehensive set of tutorials on how to get up and running quickly. Installing the solution on the server is relatively simple, says LANSA, and users will be able to access their current IBM i applications and perform administration tasks remotely within minutes of installing aXes Mobile.
The solution conforms to the zero deployment model of other aXes modules, so there is nothing to install on the mobile device, no new Web server to load, and no additional hardware needed. LANSA assures us that all data transferred between the server and mobile device is secure because it is encrypted, and access is fast because it is compressed.
LANSA developers employed leading-edge technology to create aXes Mobile, including the WebKit engine, which provides a set of classes to display Web content in Windows and implements browser features such as following links when clicked by the user, managing a back-forward list, and managing a history of pages recently visited. Developers also employed the emerging HTML5 standard for structuring and presenting content on the Web. HTML5 incorporates features like video playback and drag-and-drop that previously had been dependent upon third-party browser plug-ins, such as Adobe Flash and Microsoft's Silverlight.
With the success and interest in LANSA's aXes modernization suite, it is refreshing, but not surprising, that the company continues to enhance the suite's capabilities and provide sensible modernization solutions that are flexible but not intrusive to existing applications and require no changes in underlying code.
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