iSeries applications coupled with Microsoft applications (was: US Navy bets on Win2K)

[Buck Calabro <Buck.Calabro@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tom,

>While AS/400s and iSeries have their share of oddities
>and frustrations (WRKJOB *OPNF or "marketing" or ...),
>we see new items on that list only rarely. But how many
>times can you repeat the same positives (integrated
>facilities, meets many open interoperability standards,
>reliability, 64-bit, etc.,...) without sounding like a
>broken record and being tuned out?

Excellent point.  The way we can do that is by working WITH Microsoft
products in a more coupled way.  Here's an example.  How many times have we
seen "How do I get my iSeries database file on Excel?"  As long as the
answer to that is convoluted, we're losing ground.  There should be a very
lightweight (not Ops Nav) means to simply drag a DBF onto the Excel icon and
BAM!  It's on the PC.

Here's another example.  All the PC software in the world seems to be able
to import/export comma delimited files.  It's a frequent question as to how
to get OS400 to do that, and it's rarely successful on the first try.  Why?
If we wrote a lightweight means to drag/drop and preview the "transfer" this
would go lickety-split!

But that's playing catch-up.  How about having the iSeries drive Excel via
VBA so we can push data down to it?  Imagine an app where the accountant
presses "F10 for graph" and the iSeries fires up Excel, loads the data and
creates a pie chart?  We should drive the desktop, not wait for them to
drive us.

This sort of coupled interoperability is what I'm talking about.  Imagine us
driving the desktop; word processing, spreadsheet and so on.  That's the
positive message we can contribute to the discussion.  Results, not
theoretical uptime and interoperability numbers.

  --buck