Any AS/400 users on here?

[Oggy997]

Been blessed with this lovely & stable but outdated system to work on.

Our support and development team have just abandoned us keeping all their RPG source code, leaving us somewhat high and dry.

To be fair the system is massively robust but we need to add a few reports, which shouldn't be too difficult, written them in SQL and used STRSQL, but that's cumbersome, would like to cross compile to RPG but wouldn't know where to begin.

Given as /400 is effectively obsolete now & predates the internet, there's not a great support community so I'm praying someone can give me a steer.

I've written a CLP/RPG, but not with any complexity.

How do I go about getting my SQL into an RPG?

Thanks!

 

[Darren S]

Jesus.

Step 1 - you've actually found somewhere that still uses these?
Step 2 - I don't envy you one bit

I take it that there were no support agreements and/or legalities that meant the team leaving could assist in some way?

 

[Oggy997]

Oh there's a support agreement, they just simply don't care, it's only because it's stable we've only just found out the lack of interest.
They support, but only on priority one cases and even then just buy time until the guy who works part time comes back, so we can be without support for days.
Any priority 2 issues get left for days and weeks.
Again, there's not many but when they arise it's displaying just how much they care.

What we need is considered development (always been chargeable) & we would happily pay, but they are only interested in pushing their new platform.

 

[Oggy997]

Well I've worked that bit out but can't get it to compile.

 

[Deeg]

Jesus.

Step 1 - you've actually found somewhere that still uses these?
Step 2 - I don't envy you one bit

I take it that there were no support agreements and/or legalities that meant the team leaving could assist in some way?

~70% of warehouses run on AS/400 based systems.

They're cheap, like the budgie.

 

[Darren S]

~70% of warehouses run on AS/400 based systems.

They're cheap, like the budgie.

Usually tied in with some app or several apps (as per the OP) and left alone in a broom cupboard somewhere - virtually forgotten about!

 

[Oggy997]

It's not the cheapness, we have quotes from snap fulfill & Proteus, which aren't unreasonable. It's the fear of disruption that's making us reluctant to change, when what he have is massively stable & pretty much tailored exactly to our operation.
It is however in a server cupboard that resembles a broom cupboard!

 

[Oggy997]

In terms of the original problem, I've gotten it past the SQL precompiler, but it's failing on the RPG compiler, so work continues.

Got a call this afternoon with one of the original developers about outsourcing the project, or part thereof to him which he seems quite open to.

 

[Oggy997]

@Deeg do you know of Manhattan associates? Is that just a html frontend for their pkms (which used to run on as 400)

Just wondering if it's still an as400 core.....
I've not seen many sites run an as400 green screen as the front end at all in my career thus far

 

[Deeg]

I know Manhattan. We use it a fair bit, along with JDA, and some in house systems. I've no clue about the guts of it thiugh. I sit next to one of our Manhattan gurus, so will ask him later.

There are still plenty of green screens about. The vast majority are either customer or 3PL systems, as the cost of change is immense (as you said).

If you're a 3PL / company running 10's / 100's / 1000's of sites globally, and you're currently on an in-house green screen, the cost of going to something like JDA / Manhattan is just mind boggling.

And that's before you get to the site by site customer by customer development, which runs at about £1K a day from memory.

And then there's the transport side of things, which have a lot of green screens still.

Sadly, single didgit margins do not for investment make.

@Darren S we still run a shoe string server in some backwater part of the states that's held together by hopes and prayers for a customer that had so much development done on an early version of our in house system, that it's more cost effective to maintain the server, than re-develop the messages and interactions. I think the EDI's run into the hundreds.

 

[Oggy997]

I know Manhattan fairly well too, with it being wincantons preferred wms.

Moved on from that to as/400, and then learned pkms was as/400 based.

 

[Deeg]

Manhattan, or at least the versions we have, are Linux based.

I say I know Manhattan. I know of it, and it's features. I don't know the guts of the system or the button presses / mouse clicks required to operate it.

 

[Oggy997]

So yeah, any help with my compiling of a PGM?