References and User Quotes

References | WebSmart PHP User Quotes | WebSmart ILE User Quotes

Encompass Group, LLC

"I can create a web application with WebSmart PHP from an iSeries DB2 file, literally in minutes. It's that easy with the templates provided.

The web applications we've created save our customer service representatives (CSR) valuable time when customers call because they have the information at their fingertips. And our sales representatives out in the field love the fact that they can view sales reports via the internet, without having to call our CSR's, no matter where they are.

And I have to say this too, the BCD support is awesome. Always, helpful and professional technicians answer the telephone personally when we call for anything. They even help us "green" PHP developers code our more in depth web applications."

Stephanie Beall

White Knight Engineered Products

"The WebSmart PHP product makes the coding easy for a RPG programmer. This single program will breathe life into our aging system, and bring out the best of our i5 system. WebSmart PHP lets me deploy applications in minutes that once took hours or more."

Patrick Shrader

Ouachita Baptist University

"I love writing in your WebSmart PHP. The templates not only allow me to write an input screen in an hour or less, but it greatly helped me through the learning curve in moving to the PHP language. Coming from Websmart ILE CGI, it has the flexibility to translate some of those functions to PHP and still expand on some additional features found in PHP. It has allowed a very smooth transition."

Melinda Fowler

Benetech

Thomas Hughes, Benetech, CTO

"I first started working with BCD's product WebSmart in late 2000. I was developing a website demo in JSP to present to my company's management team for approval on a project we wanted to accomplish in IT. I was using JSP to access our DB2/400 database. I spent two months designing pages, creating artwork (buttons, logos, splashes, etc...), writing code (JavaScript, JSP, html, etc...), and configuring Websphere 2.0. By chance I saw an ad in a trade publication for BCD's WebSMart product and decided to give the 30-day trial a test.

"After download, I configured the product, which took less than 15 minutes in comparison to the day and a half that WebSphere needed. Next, I attempted my first page. By using WebSmart templates, I was able to create a page with a table of DB2/400 production data in under 10 minutes. I am an RPG coder by trade and was astounded by this. Two hours later, I had created the page to look and perform like its counterpart in my JSP version. And three days later, I had developed the whole site that took me almost two months to accomplish using other tools.

"Two jobs later, after bringing WebSmart in-house in both of those companies, my current employer utilizes WebSmart, WebSmart PHP, and Clover to generate income via the Internet in our online systems. We are also currently evaluating BCD's other products--Nexus and Presto."

Thomas Highes, CTO

KMR Systems

"KMR Systems considered many System i modernization approaches before making the strategic decision to go with BCD. Their ClearPath integrated modernization suite: WebSmart PHP, Nexus Portal, Clover Query and Catapult offers state of the art products that made our offerings cutting edge. We're now providing modern solutions to satisfy the needs of our Union and Benefits clients across the country.

Our new modernized application suite which preferably runs on the secure and reliable System i, allows us to outperform our competitors on other platforms. We now have an open source product which expands our capabilities by sharing with other open source products. We're extremely happy with the excellent support and as an added bonus the cost was reasonable."

Michael G. Galligan, President/CEO
KMR Systems Corp., IBM Vertical Industry Program (VIP) member

Columbia Machine, Inc.

WebSmart PHP has been a great asset in our PHP development. It has served two purposes: (1) It shortcuts the coding process by providing you with an easliy modifiable working module once you complete the wizard and (2) it is a great learning tool because it teaches you lots of PHP techniques just by looking at the code that is generated. In addition, your technical support is the best I have ever dealt with in our industry and I've been at this for over 28 years!

Ken Watson Senior Programmer Analyst Columbia Machine, Inc.

CertainTeed Gypsum

"We created a nice web application for our external users with WebSmart PHP. I love WebSmart PHP because it does a lot of work behind the scenes. Then, you can go in there and easily customize the applications to suite your needs. I'm really impressed with your technical support, in fact, it's fabulous. It is by far second to none. In those instances when I ran into a snag or had a question and called your support line, everyone I spoke to has always been able to answer my questions either immediately or in a reasonable amount of time. At times, my questions had nothing to do with WebSmart PHP and they helped me anyway."

Bob Boychuk, Sr. Systems Analyst

American Foods Group, LLC

Warren Schultz speaks up for BCD's WebSmart PHP, Nexus, and Clover and rates BCD support as "second to none".

"Within the last year, our company has installed BCD Nexus, Clover, and WebSmart PHP software. In my experience, this company [BCD] offers some fine software, which is backed up by outstanding support. For enterprises thinking of offering more of a web-based presence, at least for your own employees, this suite of products is worth a look.

"Nexus allowed us to begin offering a basic intranet, fairly easy to administer and add content to. You can add authorized users by having them log on via their iSeries profile or by creating an all-new profile. You can assign users to groups and then allow them access to folders, menus, or links based upon group or individual authority. It is pretty simple to upload files, which users may then download. They make it very easy to set up convenient access to various internal applications (i.e., Clover or WebSmart PHP) and external websites.

"WebSmart PHP is a very fine tool for developing PHP applications quickly. If your HTML skills are modest rather than great, and/or if your PHP knowledge is at a very basic level, then I would recommend doing what I did--I went to the five-day classroom course offered by BCD/Excel Systems. The instructor was excellent. WebSmart PHP offers quite an assortment of templates to quickly generate applications. I have used the tool to quickly develop some file lookups, file maintenance programs, inquiry type applications, etc.

"Clover has been another tool I have used quite a bit for developing some browser-based applications. I have used it quite a bit for some quickie inquiry/listing applications, including scenarios where a query is run to output to a spreadsheet. There are some quirks to learn along the way. If your SQL selects way too many records, this may pose some problems that you’ll need to address. Sometimes, when outputting to a spreadsheet, the execution may fail because the worksheet name is too long (easy to fix via small change to HTML). By and large, there is not that much need to tweak the code. If you have even a modest familiarity with SQL and HTML, you’ll be fairly proficient in short order."

Warren Schultz, Systems Analyst

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