ASNA Monarch Leads iSeries RPG Application Evolution

September 7, 2006; 09:13 AM
 ASNA (Amalgamated Software of North America) announced a new version of its Monarch development solution that allows businesses to smoothly and quickly evolve, RPG OS/400 and i5/OS applications and data; transforming monolithic green screen applications into modernized applications for Microsoft Windows .NET.

ASNA Monarch 3.0 boasts features and functionality that set a new standard for enterprise evolution of RPG applications and data; enabling the extension to Microsoft Windows .NET for integration into Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) and Web services, allowing businesses to be more competitive.

"RPG applications are not disposable," said Anne Ferguson, president of ASNA. "Enterprises and Independent Software Vendors must have the ability to evolve their existing investments in RPG iSeres/i5 applications and the RPG developers responsible for supporting them. ASNA is committed to extending the ROI and reducing the risk inherent in enterprise evolution; the evolution of an organization's RPG Application Portfolio to an environment where agility, n-tier systems, application integration, and support for Web services and SOA are integrated. Monarch gives those companies the key to unlock and extract that equity and value and extend it into the contemporary world of Web services and SOA."

ASNA Monarch, which was introduced in the fall of 2004, is a comprehensive set of tightly coupled software applications that improves the performance, integration, and usability of RPG and CL programs and applications. Using Monarch, developers transform green-screen, monolithic applications to become contemporary applications supporting n-tier architectures, modern user interfaces, enterprise application integration, Web services, and similar capabilities using the Microsoft Windows .NET platform. Monarch enables these modernized applications to seamlessly communicate with iSeries/i5 and SQL Server databases. Monarch automates the processes required to transform RPG programs or entire applications to the Microsoft .NET architecture while preserving the original program logic and application functionality. Once transformed using Monarch, applications may be extended, modified, or enhanced by both RPG and Visual Studio development teams.

Much more than a simple-source migration facility, Monarch takes RPG and CL programs, display files, menus, message files, data areas, printer files and data files to .NET in hours or days instead of months or even years.

Using Monarch, developers take complete control over the three critical steps of application modernization:

    Application Assessment: Using Monarch, an automated process
    inventories and characterizes any RPG OS/400 i5/OS application;
    collecting information for each system object found including
    programs, data files, data areas, print files, display files,
    message files, etc. This information is rendered in an organized
    graphical representation that often provides information
    previously not well understood. This process also evaluates the
    scope of effort that may be required to transform an application
    using previously defined GamePlans.

    Application Analysis: The Monarch Gallery holds details about
    programs and applications and provides developers with the tools
    required to analyze the components of those applications and their
    relationships; providing insight into the logic and procedural
    characteristics.

    The Gallery, in combination with other discovery tools, can also
    assist in identifying areas for application remediation, helping
    to identify missing or out of date source code or similar
    challenges.

    Application Transformation: Once GamePlans are established, Task
    Lists ensure developers have undertaken the preparation of the
    application for migration. The migration of RPG applications to
    Microsoft Windows .NET is completely automatic.

    Experienced developers successfully migrate tens of thousands of
    lines of RPG code to Microsoft Windows .NET in a single day.

Monarch 3.0 evolves RPG source code, and because that source persists in a syntax with which RPG developers are familiar, the existing RPG development team retains "ownership" of the newly-hosted .NET programs, allowing businesses to retain the value of programmers who understand the business side of a company. There is no Java, C++ or C# code generated, and it's entirely maintainable by existing RPG programmers. Because the resultant transformed code is 100-percent Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL) compliant, any further development can be undertaken by both RPG and object-oriented programmers and united under a Visual Studio project.

"While working with a large manufacturing company, we were able to migrate and compile more than 70,000 lines of RPG code to .NET in less than 6 hours. The quality of Monarch 3.0 is fantastic," said Christian Neissl of NiceWare.

Monarch is in use in enterprise organizations and independent software vendors around the globe, and continues to be the only path available for businesses to evolve their RPG application portfolio to Microsoft Windows .NET.

About ASNA

ASNA has been developing visual programming and development solutions for the midrange community since 1982. ASNA Web and Windows development products include ASNA Monarch, ASNA Visual RPG for .NET, DataGate and the ASNA DataGate Component Suite. ASNA is an Advanced Tier Member of IBM's PartnerWorld for Developers and ASNA solutions are part of the System i Developer Roadmap. ASNA is also a Premier Microsoft Visual Studio Industry Partner and an authorized Microsoft(R) Gold Certified Partner, a founding member of the Midrange Alliance Program (MAP) and the only member to be both IBM ServerProven and Microsoft .NET compliant. Business applications developed with ASNA Visual RPG (AVR) and DataGate are used by more than 750,000 end-users across many thousands of companies worldwide. Based in San Antonio, Texas, ASNA also has offices in Europe (Guildford, UK) and 30 international distributors. For more information, please visit www.asna.com.