Question: We are equipping our field salesforce with hand-helds or
lap tops via which they will, in brief, download data from our
AS/400, and upload data which will update records etc. What comms
and remote management features do we need to make this happen?.
We're running OS/400 V4R3.
Answer: The first important point to make is that OS/400 Version 4
Release 3 is no longer supported by IBM - it went out of support on
January 31 this year. This means that if customers find any new
errors in OS/400 and associated licensed programmes, IBM will not
be in a position to generate any new fixes (PTFs) for this release.
Version 4 Release 4 went out of support on May 31 this year, so
that too is no longer supported. The two releases of OS/400
currently supported on the iSeries are Version 4 Release 5 and
Version 5 Release 1, and I would strongly recommend that all
customers move to one of those releases.
The question posed above appears to me to be well answered by Lotus
Domino - which is such a powerful method of supporting not only
collaborative applications, but also remote users who will only
have only occasional connection to the server. Lotus Domino is the
server side of Lotus Notes. The client side continues to be called
Notes. Domino has been supported natively on the AS/400 since
Version 4 Release 2 became available in February 1998.
Lotus Domino is fundamentally a document database manager. Domino
documents can contain either structured data, in which case each
field contains only one type of data object; or unstructured data,
where a rich text field can contain any number of objects, each of
a different type. These objects could include images, fax images,
drawings, spreadsheets, documents, etc. A Domino Database will
contain a collection of documents linked in some way - such as a
customer service database, or a personnel policy database. It also
contains the elements required to manipulate the data; providing
the means to create, modify, find and delete the data stored in a
document. The elements required to design your application are
created at the same time you create your Domino database. These
would include the forms to create, read and modify documents; and
the views to display the documents in a structured and filtered
way.
Developers and users usually refer to a set of related databases as
an application. A Domino application would also include applets,
servlets, HTML pages and so on. With its own Web, groupware and
workflow capabilities, as well as its rich set of interfaces with
enterprise applications, Domino is a comprehensive means of
application serving. Domino application development facilities,
include a messaging system for sending and receiving mail documents
or notifications; the capability to share in a distributed
environment any document through an intuitive interface; security
services to allow or deny read or edit access to the whole or any
part of a document; the programming components to conditionally
route documents based upon their current status; and a complete set
of search tools, making it easy to find all the information related
to a topic.
All the elements
Domino thus has all the elements
needed to develop workflow and team enabled applications. With
Notes Designer you can create applications from a GUI with little
knowledge of programming. Templates also make setting up and
configuring applications easier.
I believe that the fundamental characteristics of the iSeries which
makes it such an outstanding business system apply equally to
running Domino on this server. These would include:
Scaleability - the new 24-way Model 840 with Sstar
processors supports over 100,000 users with the NotesBench
benchmark, with a response time of 0.067 seconds.
Reliability and Availability - in particular the fact that
each Domino server runs as an OS/400 application in its own
subsystem thus protecting it from other applications and other
Domino servers.
Security - the integrated security that is fundamentally
embedded into OS/400
Advanced Services - such as running up to 30 partitioned
servers on a single system; clustered servers for extremely high
levels of availability; and billing services.
Domino caters for remote users by allowing easy replication onto a
mobile client. Domino applications and databases can then be used
off-line, and any changes will be replicated onto the server at a
later time when it is convenient to connect to it - presumably from
an office or from home.
The TCP/IP protocol is used for communications between Notes
clients and the Domino server, and also between Domino servers. So
far as management goes, since databases are replicated between the
Notes clients and the Domino server, some of the management is
handled by Domino itself. However, one item of management software
which could also be considered is Tivoli Storage Manager. This
provides an enterprise wide backup and archive facility for a wide
variety of both Lan file servers, and a wide variety of client
workstations. The AS/400 or iSeries server will act as the backup
and recovery server in this environment.