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 WebSmart 5 with RPG/DDS to Web Conversion is Now Available!
We are excited to announce the official release of WebSmart 5.10, which includes the powerful new add-on module RDW - RPG / DDS to Web Conversion engine. WebSmart 5 also introduces dozens of  important new features. Read about the features below, which have been profiled in previous tech updates:
- An ILE/RPG to PML conversion tool.
- A DDS to HTML conversion tool.
- A completely revamped change management interface.
- A suite of new HTML wizards to help you easily add those troublesome HTML elements.
- A powerful SQL prototyping tool.
- New Vertical HTML view.
- A new ILE RPG Free Format generator, which adds support for many exciting PML features.
- Support for compiling objects as modules
- Several enhancements to the install process.
Download Websmart 5.10 now! The download also includes brand new User and Reference guides (1200 pages of documentation!) and help text, packed with useful tips. The User Guide also includes the updated training exercises and links to demo programs.
View the Press Release.
If you have any questions about your maintenance status, please contact BCD; if you have any questions about any of the new features, or about installing the upgrade, please get in touch with Tech Support.
Business Partners, Consultants and ISV's to receive up to $50,000 in FREE BCD iSeries - i5 Software Product Licenses
BCD to fully support IBM's major iSeries Tools Innovation and Partnership Initiative
Many organizations in North America and Worldwide recognize the benefits of BCD software (read the article in Application Development Trends magazine). 
BCD tools are used successfully by numerous Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and Business Partners. Our partners build modern applications for resale and offer development services using BCD products to their clients. Clients are demanding more web / browser based applications for information access and ISVs are scrambling to provide their clients with the required infrastructure. To meet these demands, numerous ISVs have selected ProGen WebSmart to build brand new web / browser based applications or extend existing text based applications.
As a BCD Business Partner you can leverage your existing client base, providing new revenue opportunities where none existed previously. You can quickly build new WebSmart programs that integrate with your current text based applications. You can also leverage your existing programs and modules calling them directly for various types of data retrieval, validation and processing. In addition, you can convert existing RPG, RPGLE and DSPF source to the browser development environment.
BCD makes it easy for you to modernize your applications and those of your clients by providing an exciting BCD Partner program that allows you to receive up to $50,000 of BCD tools license FREE! You only pay the annual maintenance to cover updates, new versions, support, documentation and more. You can select individual BCD tools, however, if you select the entire suite of products you will receive a significant discount on the maintenance. The cost of ownership and ROI is easily reconciled with our BCD Partner program. BCD products are server proven and WebSmart has been added by to the IBM Developer.
IBM's Peter Bingaman, IBM VP of iSeries Marketing (left), Eric Figura, BCD Director of Sales and Marketing (center) and Joyce Bordash, IBM Director, iSeries Ecosystem Development (right) all met at BCD's Booth during the COMMON Conference Expo in Chicago. IBM fully supports BCD and the expansion of WebSmart throughout the iSeries marketplace.
Upcoming WebSmart 5 Training Seminars
The
first WebSmart 5 Public Training classes have been scheduled. One for the week of April 11, 2005 at our technical headquarters in Victoria B.C. and one for the week of June 20, 2005 in Pennsylvania. At these classes we'll be taking a particularly close look at all the new features (see the list in November's Tech Update) included in this release. If you are just getting going with WebSmart, or even if you're a veteran WebSmart programmer wanting to familizarize yourself with the powerful new tools in this version, this seminar is the one you won't want to miss.
We are also putting together a two-part course to run the week of June 13, 2005 (note the new date). This course will include the
basic WebSmart 5 training plus an
advanced section. The seminar will devote 2 days to working with the new WebSmart 5 features and another 2 days on advanced programming techniques.
If you are interested in attending either of these classes, or would like additional information, please fill out our Training Request form. You can also contact Marcel Sarrasin, our training coordinator.
Spool-Explorer IV Available for Download
Spool-Explorer IV is now available for download to all customers current with maintenance. Version IV features a much-improved UI, with graduated backgrounds, modernized splash screens and improved configuration screens. In addition to this general overhaul of the entire UI, there are a number of other useful features:
- An improved spool file listing allows grouping the first column into folders.
- The date and time fields are combined (for easier sorting) in the spool file list.
- Additional PDF functionality including compression and encryption, overlays and additional page sizes and fonts.
- Support for *RICH format downloads and Rich Format Tags.
- Integration with Nexus Web Object Warehouse (WOW), including search values extracted from the report text.
- Improved User Security (UI and functionality).
- Support for appending files to existing zip files.
- Cancel capability for many operations (for multiple downloads etc).
- Many other UI tweaks based on customer input.
If you are a current Spool-Explorer customer, please visit our web page to download the latest version of the product and documentation. If you have any questions about your maintenance status, please contact BCD. If you have any questions about any of the new features, or about installing the upgrade, please get in touch with Tech Support.
Catapult 5.62 Now Available for Download
The Catapult development team has recently made Catapult 5.62 available for download. Catapult 5.62 is a robust update including over a dozen significant software enhancements and some minor fixes. Enhancements include:
If you have any questions about Catapult version 5.62, please email tech support.
WebSmart, Web Services & XML
The Harmonics Wholesale demo application contains a great example WebSmart implementing web services using XML. The program below creates a list of links to Amazon.com constructed by querying Amazon's web service for books that match the keywords for a product (eg, "acoustic" and "guitar"). The WebSmart program receives the XML file back from Amazon, parses it for book titles, and writes each book title and author to the page. You can access the demo application at: http://esdi.excelsystems.com/wsdemo/hwlogin.pgm, where you can log in as sam/yellow. From there, you can browse the catalog, or take a look at this beauty, the Merlin DM-12.
The Product Details page is shown below:
Included in this page is a sidebar window containing a list of books from the Amazon.com web site. This list is dynamically produced by a WebSmart program making a request to Amazon's web service.
Here's how it works:
- The WebSmart program sends a request to Amazon's web service. This request includes one or more key words (each product has key words defined for it), which is how Amazon knows what kinds of books to search for.
The PML for this is:
geturl("http://webservices.amazon.com/onca/xml?Service=AWSECommerceService
&SubscriptionId=0HBF660F5DF0328B8WR2&Operation=ItemSearch&SearchIndex=Books
&Keywords=music%20" + trim(keywords) + "&ResponseGroup=Request,Small",
"/esdi/websmart/amazonresults.xml");
This request contains the following parts:
http://webservices.amazon.com/onca/xml?Service=AWSECommerceService
which is the web service provider;
SubscriptionID=0HBF660F5DF0328B8WR2
which tells Amazon who is requesting the service (you will need to sign up with Amazon to get a SubscriptionID).
Operation=ItemSearch&SearchIndex=Books
which is the kind of operation to perform and over which index;
Keywords=music%20" + trim(keywords) + "
which appends the items key words to the request [KEYWORDS is a database file field from the item file].
"&ResponseGroup=Request,Small"
which tells Amazon how many results to return; and:
/esdi/websmart/amazonresults.xml
which is where the XML file that Amazon returns will be placed.
- Amazon returns an XML file to web server. This file is "/esdi/websmart/amazonresults.xml" on your iSeries.
- The WebSmart program opens this XML file, and extracts the title, author, and the link to the particular book.
- The WebSmart program formats this information into HTML, and outputs a web page.
This program is installed with WebSmart 5. To view the WebSmart PDW for this program, look at \websmart\definitions v5\demo apps\hwamazon.pdw. If you have any questions on how to implement this technique, please contact 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 86 - Make your SQL non-case sensitive. Follow this quick and easy example for making your SQL applications case insensitive.
- Example 87 - Using the LIKE operator for your SQL searches. This allows your users to enter partial information while searching your SQL applications, use the LIKE operator. This example is designed for version 5 of WebSmart.
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.
Securing non-iSeries Web Applications through NEXUS
NEXUS is shipped with two new APIs that gives you the ability to extract the user information from a non-iSeries web program. These are:
NXSETSESS
This non-cgi API will set a client side cookie "SESSION" with the valid NEXUS session ID which is an encrypted string that contains the NEXUS user information of the person who is logged on. To enable this you will need to log onto NEXUS as a site administrator and select site settings from the management tools. At the very bottom of the page you will find the User Application Interface Settings. The API that we are interested in is "Exit point API immediately after successful login:" Fill in the field with the following text "NXSETSESS". Now every time a user logs in a cookie will get written to their PC with the valid session ID.
NXRTVSESS
This web program is designed as a web service provider. NXRTVSESS takes a session ID as an entry parameter and outputs the NEXUS user session information in an XML page. In order to take advantage of this you will need to write a CGI program that extracts the cookie off of your PC and does a web services request from NXRTVSESS. The CGI program that you write will need to make the request from a server that is on the same domain as the i-Series. The URL string that the request will be made from will look similar to the following:
"http://iSeriesIP/nexuspublic/NXRTVSESS.pgm?sessid="
The session ID is a 64 character field that will need to get appended to the end of the above URL.
When you install NEXUS 2.51 these APIs are included as well as a configuration file sessfile.ini that resides on your IFS at /esdi/nexus/nexuspublic/sessfile.ini.
This text file looks like this:
<numIP>2</numIP>
<validIP>192.168.0.42;192.168.0.100</validIP>
<domain>excelsystems.com</domain>
In this file, "numIP" is the number of servers that will be able to access the cookie on the PC. "validIP" is the valid IP addresses of the servers able to access the cookie. "domain" is the domain name that the i-Series and the non i-Series servers reside. Notice that there is not a sub domain specified. If you specify a sub domain then only the i-Series server will be able to access the cookie.
The Apache configuration that runs NEXUS needs to be modified to allow access to this program. you will need to add the following to your NEXUS Apache configuration:
ScriptAliasMatch ^/nexuspublic/nxrtvsess\.pgm$ /QSYS.LIB/xl_smslib.LIB/NXRTVSESS.PGM
Once you have retrieved the user information you can reserve access to your non i-Series programs based on this information. The Session ID will only be valid as long as you are logged into NEXUS. This means that you will not be able to retrieve the user information if the Session ID is not valid and if you cannot retrieve the user information you can deny access to your non i-Series programs.
If you have any questions on how to take advantage of these features, please contact Technical Support.
Summary List of Recent Updates
Nexus 2.51
Nexus 2.51 was made available March 8, and includes the following enhancements:
ProGen Plus 8.02
This is the latest ProGen Plus update:
- PG8R022 - 2005/02/23 - Requires OS/400 V5R1 or later. Corrects problem were parameter list was orphaned if an option 7 then 11 was used from the Main Menu (ZWRKPDF).
Please visit the ProGen Plus Updates page for further information on the available updates.
© 2005 ExcelSystems Software Development, Inc.
ProGen WebSmart and ProGen Plus are Registered Trademarks in the US and Canada and Trademarks in all other countries.
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