RE: Warehouse Automation Project

Which direction is the data moving from the AS/400 to the remote machines?
John Brandt
iStudio400.com

-----Original Message-----
From: ouuch@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ouuch@xxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2003 3:13 PM
To: midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Warehouse Automation Project


Hello,

well, we have a bunch of warehouse automation machines that exchange data
with our 
AS/400. These machines basically read and update from about 5 dedicated
interface files.
Problem is that we currently have 3 kinds of systems:

            Warehouse filling machine:  RS/6000 with DB2/Connect
            Picking/Labeling device:       Win2K-Server with OLE-DB ( Visual
Basic prgs.)
            Sorting machine           :      Win2K-Server with ODBC (also
Visual Basic)

The software for these machines is done by third-party (which also does the
machinery). These 
guys have no knowledge of AS/400 and what I have seen of their programming
is, er, strange.

Anyhow, additional stations for lot-tracing are planned, and third-party
came up with a central, 
non-AS/400 server (with Oracle-DB). Here, the 400 would only exchange order
data with the 
Orcale-Server.

Performance is one of our major problems here. DB2/Connect is okay, but the
OLE-DB and 
ODBC connections needed some major tuning. SQL-statements used are very
straightforward 
and the correct logicals are available.

What other connection methods are available for this type of work? We
basically need close to 
real-time connections.

I have thought about going to dataqueues and skip all that SQL-stuff. Are
there dataqueue 
tools for Unix and Win2K systems (Visual Basic)?

Some statistical data: We process about 20.000 orders/day and 99.5% are
shipped same day 
to about 20 European contries. Orders come in through EDI and are processed
automatically. 
Warehouse people pick up the delivery note and fill the order. It is then
put on the sorter and 
transported to the correct delivery station (carrier dependent).

Best Regards,

Oliver




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