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BUILDING BRIDGES FROM AS/400 TO MODERN PLATFORMS | FAQ

  • 1.  BUILDING BRIDGES FROM AS/400 TO MODERN PLATFORMS | FAQ

    ROCKETEER
    Posted 06-01-2020 17:02

    VP of Solution Sales, Dan Magid, and Senior Sales Engineer, Charles Jones, recently hosted the "Building Bridges: AS/400 to modern platforms" webinar in partnership with IBM Systems Magazine. A recording of the session is available here if you'd like to view it again or share with colleagues.

    The webinar focused on how organizations can "build bridges" by using services to connect applications built in RPG, CL, and DB2 for the AS/400 with applications and components built in the latest technology-regardless of whether those applications are running on IBM i, or any other platform. The problem for many organizations is their isolated application environments. Often split into core platform developers and new technology developers, the culture of these two application groups can be very different.

    The difficultly is in how to connect the people who work in the new technology environment with the applications and functions being built and maintained in the heritage environment. It becomes further challenging to connect these groups with cloud, partner, or customer applications. The result is what Dan calls a "dis-integrated" organization. But the outdated model of working in separate silos–legacy vs new technology–can be replaced with one that uses APIs to integrate new technologies with heritage technologies.

    Service-enabled applications can be combined to create multi-function applications that take advantage of not only your core functions, but functions being provided by third-parties, business partners, and customers. In manufacturing, this might mean integrating supply-chain management systems across suppliers and transportation providers. In banking, it means streamlining complex payment processing rules so that merchants can directly debit bank accounts by accessing customer data at the services layer.

    1.) We began by asking registrants what are the most important application modernization priorities for their organization. Here are the results:

    2.) But what's driven organizations to want service-enablement in the first place? What are the biggest challenges organizations are facing? We asked this question during the broadcast. Here's how attendees voted:

    The top challenges attendees are facing are providing better web or mobile experiences, and finding skilled RPG developers. The third biggest challenge is in getting real-time access to multiple systems.

    3.) If you're worried you that your organization is behind the curve when it comes to using APIs to modernize your infrastructure, let us reassure you that you aren't! We asked the audience if they're using APIs to modernize their applications, and here are the results:

    Most respondents are planning to do so, but haven't started yet.

    4.) At the end of the webinar, we answered a few questions live from the audience. The first question was: what's the learning curve like for Rocket API?

    Sales Engineer Charles Jones answered that the great thing about Rocket API is that all developers need are their existing skillsets as a foundation. The standard Rocket API training course is 3-5 days, and by the end, users can hit the ground running and start modernizing applications. That's it!

    5.) The last question from a member of the audience was: "since Rocket API is using screen-logic for the services, what happens if the service gets disconnected from the terminal session?"

    Charles answered: All Rocket APIs are "stateless," meaning there isn't a persistent session. The Rocket API engine manages that state with the host. A disconnection falls into the "exception condition" category, so if for some reason you have a screen-based API in-flight and something happens to the IBM i, or the network connection, Rocket API would return an exception condition to the caller. But Rocket API has several capabilities that you can use to address those scenarios and construct the appropriate recovery method, or response.

    This post was previously shared on the Rocket Blog.



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    Jeroen van Dun
    Rocket Software
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