Re: E-Commerce

Not an exhaustive list, but some thoughts:

You might want to check with the folks on IGNITE400. I'm sure there has
been substantial discussion of some of these issues.

Net.Data can be used to access AS/400 data if you are into this type of
macro programming. Watch out for performance issues as you scale up. No
personal experience here, just watching all of those folks on the
bleeding edge...

Binary Tree is a vendor with a merchant product for Lotus Domino. There
have been some pretty good things said about their product.

If you want to go with a sockets interface between your Web server
CGI/ISAPI/etc. programs, you can check out our Alliance Series TCP/IP
product. Scales up to volumes far larger than you are anticipating.

If you need to move data to a web server there are some IBM utilities to
convert to CSV and other formats. Check out the CPYTOIMPF and CPYFRMIMPF
commands. If you need something a bit more robust we have a data
conversion product (inbound and outbound) that can do this called
Alliance CrossData/400.

If you are looking to automate the FTP of files between AS/400 and Web
server we can help with that, too. Alliance FTP Manager is our product
that does this.

If e-mail integration is in the cards, you might check out Net400's
product. They are a partner firm. Lots of APIs that let you integrate
applications with Internet, Exchange, Notes mail, etc. As well as
sending reports (single or burst) to mail recipients.

You are probably going to encounter security issues. I always recommend
that you find a partner firm that specializes in security and that they
be ICSA certified. Locally we've used ESSI in Kirkland, Washington. We
have no relationship to this company other than we like their work.

Good luck!
Patrick
-- 
IBM AS/400 communications, FTP automation, and network security
software and consulting services.

http://www.patownsend.com


Dan Thomas wrote:
> 
>         We are interested in giving existing customers the ability to order
> products and check on order / shipment status via the Internet.  I would
> expect our volume to initially be about 25 new orders per day and 50 order
> inquiries (this is a small percent of our total volume).  I have a feeling
> many of our customers will prefer to place their order via the telephone but
> would use the system for order inquiries.
> 
>         We are running JBA V3.5.0 on our AS/400 620 V4R2 along with multiple
> NT servers on our LAN / WAN.   We also have a AS/400 150 V4R2 which is
> currently not being used.   Our network is already connected to the Internet
> with a firewall.
> 
>         I don't consider any of the JBA screens to be user friendly enough
> for the casual user, nor would they have any logic for restricting customers
> to only seeing information pertaining to them, so I don't think 5250
> emulation or GUI'd/Java screen scraper version of existing screens would be
> of much value.  For order entry, I would envision using a separate Internet
> Order Entry application that we would feed into our system as if it had been
> received as an ANSI X.12 850 Purchase Order (phase 1) and phase 2 load the
> orders online with immediate inventory allocation, credit checking, etc.
> Ability to handle credit cards would be a real plus.  Obviously this
> application would have to receive downloaded items/prices from our JBA
> system.   For order / shipment status inquiries I would prefer to have an
> application developed that would access our JBA files online.  An option
> would be to download this information on some schedule to another
> application/server if there was a good package available already for order
> status inquiries.
> 
>         We are in the exploratory stage.  We don't have much inhouse
> expertise with E-Commerce and I'm considering hiring someone to handle that
> for us.
> 
>         Any suggestions for tools and packages to help us attain our goals?
> TIA.
> 
> Dan Thomas
> Sr. VP Information Systems
> Medical Distribution, Inc.
> 4500 Progress Blvd
> Louisville, KY  40218-5058
> Phone (502) 454-9013 ext 120
> email  DThomas@lpw-mdi.com
> 
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