System iNetwork

December 3, 2008

Readers' Choices: BCD Fans Offer Feedback

Six readers chimed in to offer a thumbs-up to BCD application development and modernization solutions.

Thomas Hughes swears by BCD's WebSmart, which helps RPG and Cobol programmers create new i system web applications and modernize legacy ones as well. He also appreciates the BCD tech support team. Here's part of his testimonial:

"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."

Ellery Soifer offers more kudos for WebSmart:

"Under the heading of 'helped you solve actual business and IT issues' would be their [BCD's] understanding of how our company needed to scan and optically store product images, merge these images with existing iSeries data, and present them to our users in a search-engine type environment. The use of their WebSmart product along with their vast knowledge created an amazing functional company tool that is in constant use.

"And further, under the category of 'just made my job easier,' was the fact that commissioning their organization to kick-start the project gave me time to handle business emergencies (as is common in a one-man IT environment) and that owning the WebSmart product allows me to execute minor changes myself as our business environment evolves."

Reader Jeremy Bumgarner, who notes that BCD's tech support is "icing to the cake," says his employer purchased WebSmart in 2006 and has developed several robust, web-based systems with it:

"WebSmart takes care of the web-interactions for us, leaving us to develop logically sound, web-based solutions in record time. As a programmer who has provided web-based iSeries solutions before without a tool like WebSmart, I can fully appreciate the time savings this affords us.

"One of the features that I am most impressed with is data access on non-iSeries systems. JDBC data access is one of the newer features of WebSmart, and I absolutely love it. I get to treat the MSSQL tables just like the table exists on our iSeries. No special coding, it just works. I take care of business logic, WebSmart does the rest. As an IT person, 'it just works' is very comforting, and WebSmart does just that.

"Additionally, management is in love with another feature of WebSmart--SmartCharts. With SmartCharts, I am able to build 3D charts and graphs on the iSeries and deliver them via the web. I am even able to make them clickable for data mining purposes. How cool is that--an on-the-fly generated 3D graph using our data."

Reader George McLaurine relies on BCD's ProgenPlus, which helps clients develop and maintain native ILE/RPG source code and take advantage of of RPG IV features such as longer field names, new op codes, built-in functions, and free-format or fixed-format coding.

McLaurine says: "For more than 35 years, on all the IBM platforms, I have been using RPG and its iterations. From cards to coding sheets to full screen SEU, through the System 3s, 32s, 34s, 36s, 38s and 400s, I've had an opportunity to see and work with many, many tools and techniques that enhance program development efficiency and accuracy. Nothing has come close to ProgenPlus for everyday use. In a very dynamic IT environment, the demand for online queries, reports, prompts, and data entry is a daily challenge.

"It would be hard to quantify the productivity gains of using this product, but I would put it well above the 1000% mark (yes, that's 1000%). Tasks requiring hours before are done in minutes now. Projects that took days are now done in hours. And since Progen Plus lends itself very well to modular programming, internally developed code and routines can be used over and over again.

"The ability to integrate my own routines with the Progen base code and to constructively modify the Progen program styles to best suit my company's needs is an unbeatable combination. It makes anyone a hero. And, because of the super increased productivity, it directly affects the bottom line of the folks for whom I work."

Warren Schultz speaks up for BCD's WebSmart PHP, Nexus, and Clover and rates BCD supprort 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. Since launching Nexus, we have also implemented Microsoft SharePoint. The latter has at least one advantage over Nexus. With SharePoint, you can upload documents (i.e., MS Word or Excel) which then can then be further modified. In contrast, with Nexus, each time the document was to change, one had to delete the copy out on the Nexus folder before uploading it again manually.

"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."

Dennis Ruud is a Clover fan:

"We have found Clover to be a very useful tool in rapidly creating reports and getting them to the web. With Clover it's very easy to create a report and deploy it on our portal. I was able to create a report and display it as a bar graph in the first couple of hours we had the product. I also like the fact that we have unlimited users and developers. I know next to nothing about html and cgi programming, but Clover generates the html and cgi programs in a flash. Clover also lets you go in and tweak the html if you need to do that, making it very flexible. It's also possible to call RPG programs from a Clover report."

****Reader's Choice is a System iNEWS/System iNetwork feature that lets nonbiased readers (no vendor employees, please) offer feedback on products and services that have helped them. If you'd like to recommend a product that you've used to solve actual problems, save money, or simplify a process, we--and our readers--want to know about it. Put your recommendation of 500 words or less here or send it to Erin Bradford at erin.bradford@penton.com or post it on our LinkedIn page under the Discussions tab.****

--Vicki Hamende, application development and database editor

Posted by vhamende at December 3, 2008 12:05 PM