One of the world's leading metals refining companies has recently created three interactive websites to serve its own operational needs and the information needs of two distinct groups of external users. Each web portal provides access to data held on the company's AS/400; data that is constantly changing in line with the progress of the orders placed by individual customers and any changes made to product specifications. Ken Harrison reports on how the company's small IT team, equipped only with traditional AS/400 skills, developed the websites and links to its databases in double-quick time.

Britannia Refined Metals is the world's largest primary refiner of lead and alloys, processing around about 150,000 tons of these metals each year, and a customer base to match. It is part of the International group MIM Holdings Ltd. Of Brisbane, Australia.

The company has its UK headquarters, a main manufacturing plant, and a metals recycling plant at Gravesend, Kent. It also has a metals and polypropylene recycling facility at Wakefield, Yorkshire.

For various operational and business-efficiency reasons, Britannia found that it needed to create interactive, web-enabled access to the company's various databases. At project inception, these databases were hosted on an AS/400, model 500-2142, with OS/400 V4R3.

Jim Makin, the company's IT Manager, first looked at IBM's own web-enabling toolset that comes with OS/400, but found it to be too complex in practice and with early implementation of a user-friendly solution in mind, he decided on the Strategi offering from ADVANCED BusinessLink with its High Speed Messaging component.

Together with Carol Constant, his deputy in the IT department, he began piloting High Speed Messaging within Strategi in September 1999. The pair had only traditional RPG and COBOL programming skills at their fingertips at this stage, but nevertheless they were able to create fully interactive web page access to selected parts of their company database with the aid of Strategi's HSM component.

Jim Makin explained: "We needed separate, and easily distinguishable Web ports to relevant operational data for each of three distinct user groups- our customers, our agents, and our staff, but without the need for making a direct connection or sign on to our AS/400. We started on the road to providing this facility in the autumn of 1999, with the aim of having something in place by the spring or summer of last year.

"In the event, the first web-enabled applications to be created by Britannia went "live" at the beginning of 2000. This was only about three months after we had first set eyes on the Strategi offering."

Strategi is a native AS/400 e-business software suite that has been developed by ADVANCED BusinessLink Corporation, which has its corporate headquarters in Kirkland, Washington State, USA, and its UK arm based in Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire.

The suite comprises four separate "best of breed" components: a pure Java client applet that provides browser-based remote access, 'Push Technology' used to deliver reports and files to the browser, a 400-specific HTTP server, and High Speed Messaging, a unique middleware that allows the creation of live, sessionless Internet/Intranet using RPG or any other AS/400 programming language.

In addition, the suite is configured on a template-based architecture, which provides direct access to AS/400 data, without compromising the inherent security features of the AS/400 or iSeries server.

ADVANCED BusinessLink claims that this design approach has enabled it to provide a more natural and efficient software server than any other comparable AS/400-oriented product.

High Speed Messaging or HSM is architecture built into Strategi's own web server that enables the AS/400 or iSeries 400 to created and deliver dynamic Web pages to a browser on any web-enabled device anywhere in the world. Additionally, data can be captured from web pages directly into an AS/400 or iSeries database.

HSM uses a template-based architecture to combine Web documents stored in the AS/400 IFS with data on the AS/400 retrieved using server programs coded in traditional AS/400 languages, to create these dynamic web pages.

It is not practical or particularly secure to allow potentially thousands of external users such as customers to sign on and work interactively on the AS/400. Besides the administrative nightmare of deadline with all of these user profiles, protocols like FTP are not very secure.

A solution to this problem is to allow customers to access the data they require via the Internet or an Intranet and to have all data available to them as Web documents. As no direct session on the AS/400 is required, the administration, security and scalability issues are dispensed with. The Strategi HSM offering is based upon this proposition.

In practice, a template Web page is created describing its visual layout, but by itself it is not a complete document. When a client device requests the document, Strategi's Web server will invoke an HSM server program. This will access data directly from the AS/400 and complete the template. The completed template page is then delivered to the client browser. Any changes made to the relevant AS/400 databases will be automatically reflected in the delivered Web pages.

By using this template-based architecture HSM completely separates front-end design and back-end logic.

When talking about the separation of design and logic, ADVANCED BusinessLink prefers to define design in terms of the actual look and feel of the web pages as delivered to the user, whereas logic is the processing required to retrieve the information from the AS/400 and place it into the web page.

When creating the web page template in a mark-up language such as HTML, WML or XML, the website or graphic designer need not know of the AS/400 processing behind the web page that will make them dynamic- no embedded programming logic an no HTML inside of the server programs or servlets. Instead they can concentrate purely on the design and layout of the document and leave the rest to AS/400 programmers. The latter can then design and code applications without having to worry about the look and feel of the web pages.

This separation allows the flexibility to change the layout of the document without re-coding the application behind it or changing the processing logic of the application without needing to re-design the web page. There is also no need to retrain AS/400 programmers as graphic designers or vice versa.

HSM server programs are responsible for interrogating files and capturing data on the AS/400. These programs can be written in RPG, RPGIV (ILE), C, Java or even CL. The importance of this lies in the fact that it is possible to create a powerful and dynamic website without re-training the existing IT staff in other languages such as Java. Skills in the latter are certainly needed for other Web servers such ones using Java servlet technology.

Because Strategi supports several languages it is possible to mix them and use the best attributes for each. For example, RPG is an extremely robust language and is fast at file input and output, while C is great for low level system programming but it can be difficult to make error-free. On the other hand, Java is very flexible and can deal with areas in which the other languages are either clumsy or not capable of being used. HSM allows the seamless integration of all of these languages.

The ability to use HSM servers coded in different languages also provides an easy path for developers to migrate to other languages. Instead of jumping in at the deep end and writing complex programs in unfamiliar code, less difficult servers can be attempted initially. As skill levels increase, so can program complexity.

The pilot commercial-scale implementation of Strategi with HSM was carried out over the past year or so at the Gravesend base of Britannia Refined Metals.

"Once the HSM servers were set up, we found it incredibly easy to create the individual Web pages and port them to the relevant areas within the database, using the HSM component within Strategi," commented Jim Makin.

Both he and Carol Constant have now created three different web page templates as 'home pages' from which each category of user can indirectly access the information held on the company's AS/400 in a way that is tailored to the needs of each user group. They have also created a large number of complementary screen displays to help users navigate around the relevant parts of the database.

The first group to be served by this new system was the company's staff, and they were given web access to the database from January 2000. They were followed last April by the company's outside agents and then in June by their customers.

"A typical practical use of our site might be for a customer to check on the current progress through the manufacturing or transportation cycle of an order that he or she has previously placed. This is possible because up-to-date information on the status and progress of each order is entered by our factory and transport staff into our AS/400 database, using similar interactive screen displays to the one which the customer can now use to raise an enquiry," Makin explained.

"Although the customer is able to raise queries on issues that are specific to his particular order or business needs, the security protocols that we have put in place mean that he cannot access any information concerning orders place by other customers. The customer also cannot change any of the data held on our database, although queries on the effects of proposed scheduling changes are possible.

"We are now aiming to make the Web-enabled enquiry to the database as interactive as possible, so that, for example, a customer can use it to predict the effects on delivery cycle of possible changes to product specification or quantity values.

He feels that one of the greatest benefits of the system is that instant internal access to all operational information is possible from one central screen display. "This means that individual staff can now sign on and immediately retrieve overnight reports from any of the company's manufacturing or recycling plants; a process that replaces the hitherto time-consuming and labour-intensive process of distributing reports by hand."

This process is made possible through the use of Strategi's PUSHfeed technology, which allows files to be transferred securely through protected ports and enables browser users to receive them as PC Desktop documents without needing any knowledge of AS/400 spool file management.

"The single-screen access also means that we no longer have the problem of operatives having to sign off and then onto another system in order to switch between information held in different databases."

"The perception people have when using the system is that they have completely seamless access to all data that is sitting on our AS/400, although this perception can be misleading because only certain designated users have the means to alter the data that is held on our central system."

"The response of all our users has been extremely encouraging, and our agents in Germany have been the most enthusiastic user group to date," he commented.

The cost of implementing the new system, including the cost of designing and implementing all new screen displays, has been in the order of £40,000-£50,000, spread over a year. "Of course, the ongoing operating costs are considerably lower than they were hitherto," he added.

There are currently around 40 terminals providing access to the HSM system on Britannia's internal system and plans to increase the number of users on each of the company's main UK sites at Gravesend and Wakefield. The number of potential external users is, of course, unlimited.

Copyright © 1999 Duke Communications International, all rights reserved. (http://www.iseries400network.com)