Need for Modernization:

AS400 is an Integrated system with its own Operating System, Database, Security, Web Server pre installed in a single package. AS400 has provided solutions to the need to various industries since 1984.

Today when the world has moved on to the Mobile/Web applications, the use of AS400 is diminishing. Users look forward to better UI which have more flexibility and Graphics. AS400 native UI have black background and text in green color which looks similar to the DOS prompt.

Solution:

IBM have already loaded the AS400 with Apache web server. Therefore it is very easy to create an HTTP web server for AS400. When creating the server, we should give the location of the HTML and the scripting files. Web will automatically be able to load such files from the location specified.

There are some software’s that are built on this feature and provide the modernization of AS400 legacy screens. Profound UI is the latest modernization suite for IBM iSeries Applications.

Profound UI provides a better Approach to display information to user and more flexibility to the developer to make the application fast and easy to use. Profound UI is 100% native to IBM i and is 100% browser based. Various features of this software include:

1. Multiple grids can be added to single page. This was not possible with native AS400 screens.

2. It provides the flexibility to move beyond 24*80 screen.  Comparing to native As400 screens, multiple legacy screens can be combined in single web based form.

3. Drag and Drop capabilities. Various columns of Grid’s can be sorted. Grids can be easily downloaded to excel.

4. Save Money and Time — Use the talent, RPG assets and hardware you already have. There’s no need to outsource development or migrate to a non-IBM i platform.

5. With Profound, screens for Mobile can also be created.

Different Modules provided by Profound:

1. Designer – This is tool used to design customized screens. It provided Drag and Drop feature where we can just drag a widget to the display file and change its properties to use it in RPG program. Code for the display file is written in AS400 DDS using the HTML tags.

2. Atrium – This is the Application Navigation product. Various Menu’s and Items can be setup to run on click.

3. Genie – This product provides run time conversion of the native screens to Profound UI. It will directly show the existing screens in the Web based UI.

4. Jumpstart – This product is used to create basic maintenance functions. It will auto generate the Display File and the Program as per the option selected by the programmer.