BCD Wins Apex Awards!

The annual iSeries NEWS Apex Awards were announced last month at the Spring COMMON in San Antonio, and BCD is pleased to announce that we have once more received multiple awards. In the Document Management category, Catapult 5 won the 2004 APEX Award, while WebSmart was a 2004 Apex Award finalist for best Web Development tool, as both an Editor and Reader's Choice. In addition, Nexus also won the iSeries NEWS 2004 APEX Readers Choice Award in the Security category.

BCD has now won 25 industry awards for our various software products. Please visit our web site for an overview of the awards!


BCD @ IBM eServer iSeries Technical Conference

If you will be attending the IBM eServer iSeries Technical Conference New Orleans, Louisiana, please drop by booth 10 to pay us a visit. The technical conference will be attended by members of both the sales and development teams, who will be offering demos of all the products, as well as answering questions about current and upcoming features in all our products. Darrell Jackson, lead developer for Catapult, will be in attendance, so if you own Catapult, this would be a great opportunity for you to talk with Darrell.

The Technical Conference will be held June 14-16 at the Sheraton in New Orleans. We'll be looking forward to meeting you there.


ProGen 9 Feature Requests

The ESDI development team is beginning to work on ProGen Plus Version 9 and is now seeking input from our customers on features that you would like to see included in the upcoming release.

If you work with ProGen Plus on a regular basis and find yourself stymied on occasion due to the lack of a particular feature, we would like to hear from you. Likewise, if there is an inordinately complex set of steps you find yourself having to repeat on a regular basis to achieve a simple outcome, please drop us a note. Or if you have become aware of a great new feature in RPG that the current release of ProGen Plus doesn't easily handle, do give us a call.

Client input is always an important part of the decisions made for (and against) the value of different suggested features, so no matter how trivial you think a feature may be, or how difficult to implement, we greatly appreciate all the input we get and it is always taken into account.

If you have any suggestions, please give us a call at (250) 655-1766, or drop us a note. We look forward to hearing from you.


WebSmart 4 Public Training Class

We have scheduled a WebSmart 4 public training session for the week of July 19-22, 2004. We plan to hold the class at our location here in beautiful Sidney, BC. This class will include updated material covering all the important new features added in Version 4. For a third-party overview of the new release, read the article published a few months ago in Midrange Stuff.

If you are interested in attending this class and would like additional information, please fill out our Training Request form. You can also contact Marcel Sarrasin, our training coordinator. For a general overview of the contents and structure of our training class, you can visit the Training page at our web site.

This is an absolutely beautiful time of year in the Victoria area, and would be a great opportunity for you to bring along your significant other to spend some time visiting the world-famous Butchart Gardens, having tea at the Empress Hotel, or taking a stroll along the downtown waterfront. Victoria is a world-famous tourist destination, and the summers here are particularly spectacular.

 


Hoshizaki America is the North American arm of the world's second largest manufacturer of commercial refrigerated food service equipment with sales of nearly $1 billion. 51 of the top U.S. food service chains use Hoshizaki ice machines. Hoshizaki's IBM iSeries model 270 hosts Mapics, and serves 160 users.

Hoshizaki America has been using ProGen Plus for some time now, and BCD recently had the opportunity to interview Konrad Underklofer, their IT director, and talk to him about how things have been going with ProGen Plus. To read the interview, please Click Here.

For further information about ProGen Plus, please contact either Sales or Technical Support.
 

WebSmart Example Programs

Below are descriptions of the WebSmart Example Programs that are new this month. Click on the links to see the demos, and additional details on how you can implement these features in your own programs.

Example 63 - This program illustrates an example of an SQL Count query. You can click on the link to see the program in action, and also download the PDW to review the exact technique that we've used.

Example 64 - This program illustrates an example of an SQL Average query.

Example 65 - This program illustrates an example of an SQL Sum query.

Example 66 - Using HTML formatting and the sendmailex function. This program demonstrates how to send an HTML formatted email message to a specified email address using the sendmailex function.

For further details on any of the WebSmart examples, or if you have any questions on how to implement the techniques they illustrate, please contact Technical Support.


 WebSmart Web Services


Web Services are quickly becoming a popular way for companies to share their data with partners, customers and with the general public. Web Service are used in many applications, everything from retrieving stock quotes to validating credit card information.

You can now use WebSmart to take advantage of existing web services (or indeed to start your own Web Service). Here is an example that retrieves information from Amazon.com. In this WebSmart web services example you can type in your favorite author and click search. Once the search button is clicked the WebSmart program retrieves the information (provided in XML format) from Amazon. The data is then parsed and displayed in the format and style of your choosing.

If you would like additional information on how to access or implement web services please contact BCD Technical Support at (250) 655-1766.






 Original HTTP Server no longer supported in V5R3(i5/OS)

OS/400 release V5R3 will no longer ship with the Original HTTP server. As a result, it is necessary for all clients currently using the Original HTTP server to migrate their server instance configurations to Apache before proceeding with an upgrade to V5R3. Ideally, your migration to Apache should be done well in advance of your operating system upgrade and be setup to test the Apache configuration thoroughly using a port other than port 80 prior to moving it to production.

IBM provides a facility to migrate your Original instance to Apache. This facility is available through the administrative web instance accessible on your iSeries via port 2001. The migration tool provided has evolved since it was initially introduced, it will create an Apache instance from your Original HTTP instance but must be scrutinized for accuracy and tested thoroughly. In many cases some modifications will be required. This migration tool can be used while the Original HTTP server instance is active.

As a service to our customers, our consulting group can assist you with this conversion process and if requested, perform the conversion for you based on your Original HTTP configuration. Please contact Kevin Cronin, if you have any questions or would like to use our consulting services to do the conversion.

Additional information on the Apache Server and the migration tool provided can be found in chapter 8 of the following IBM Redbook: HTTP Server Powered by Apache

IBM has recently announced the new Squadron machines, branded eServer i5. These servers ship with an operating system called i5/OS, which is a simply a re-branding of OS/400 V5R3.

For more info click these links:
http://www.tango04.com/enews/#new
http://www.midrangeserver.com/tfh/tfh050304-story01.html




 Summary List of Recent Updates

Catapult 5.12

Catapult 5.11 and 5.12 were released during the month of May. Version 5.12 (Poller: 5.12 Build 1873; Console: 5.10 Build 1584 Update 0) contains all the latest fixes, as well as a few new features:
  • In the Poller config, queues that the user is not authorized are shown greyed out. This will give an indication which queues cannot be processed by the Poller if the Poller uses the same user profile.
  • Added GrabRule created by and modified by information to the General tab in the GrabRule wizard.
  • A problem with ZRUNRULE not creating the Parse/Split and the Bookmark section of the GrabRule has been resolved.
  • A problem with the Show Spool file has been resolved. Queues encountered that the user did not have authority to would cause the search to end prematurely.
  • Occasionally the Mail thread would get behind, leaving the last request in Pending state until the next request entered the queue. This has been resolved.
  • Resolved a memory leak issue when splitting and creating many PDF's from a large spool file. The symptoms exhibited included receiving Error Code = 6 from the Poller after creating a large number of PDF's.
  • Resolved problem in the Console when attempting to copy GrabRules without a GrabRule selected.
  • Resolved a problem in the Console when copying email groups that could occasionally lead to a loop on the iSeries.
  • Fixed problem with Toggle All Rules Active/Inactive, which would pop an AV message.
  • Modified how the sort order is handled for the GrabRule column in the Console.
  • Fixed size limitation for email address.
Please visit the Catapult Updates page for further information on the available updates.

WebSmart 4.04

  • Build 7421 (IDE) - 2004/06/03 - Clearer message on failure to save in WCM, and improved recoverability; fix to inline PML function naming for JSE; fixed an order-by problem in the SQL template.
  • W402004P (WAS) - 2004/06/03 - Trap occasional error issued by CEEMSG; Fix rare parm length problem; Allow longer urls in GetUrl; Fix some SQL parsing problems


    • Please visit the WebSmart Updates page for further information on the available updates.

    File-Flash Plus 4.02

    These updates require V4R5M0 as a minimum operating system release level.
    • FFP40002 - 2004/05/10
      Fixed:
      1. F23 to switch files when specified file not found.
      2. Printing records when displaying in arrival order.
      3. File lookup (F4 from F23) crashing on a join logical.
      4. Repository, *ALL is now valid value for FILE when importing into the repository.
    • FFP40001 - 2004/01/20 - Fixed problem where you could not view DDM files in File Flash 4.2 using FILDSP command.
    Please visit the File-Flash Plus Updates page for further information on the available updates.

    ProGen Plus 8.01
    • PG8R009 - 2004/05/12 - Corrected problem where work field names weren't being generated correctly.
    Please visit the ProGen Plus Updates page for further information on the available updates.

    © 2004 ExcelSystems Software Development, Inc.
    ProGen Plus and ProGen WebSmart are Trademarks in the US and Canada.


    Current Product Update Levels

    Nexus 2.05

    ProGen Plus 8.01 - PG8R009

    ProGen WebSmart 4.04
    - W402004P
    - Build 7421

    Catapult 5.12

    Spool-Explorer/400 3.2 - SP32R007

    Docu-Mint 6.0 - DN60R009

    DbGen 2.3 - DB23R008

    File-Flash Plus 4.20 - FFP40002


    Recent Update Summary

    Applying Updates
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