RE: A better explanation per my last question on a product called RIOmade by a company known as ASC

ASC is now owned by HelpSystems. Try calling 847-605-1311. I think RIO died
off.

Paul Nelson
Office 512-392-2577
Cell 708-670-6978
nelsonp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx


-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of thomas burrows
Sent: Monday, February 27, 2012 7:20 PM
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: A better explanation per my last question on a product called
RIOmade by a company known as ASC

Anyone know what happened to this product???

OLD article from 2002 or 2003 from IT JUNGLE.

Datapro banks on the Caribbean and Latin America for business. As an
IBM software vendor and banking software developer, Datapro sold 22
new turnkey iSeries-based systems in 1999 to replace those developed
by other vendors and users that didn't meet Y2K standards. Having sold
between 12 and 15 new systems annually in previous years, the year
2000 was a boon for Datapro, but the last several years haven't been
as kind.

Through 2002, Datapro continued to market hard, but it sensed
resistance to its product, Integrated Banking Solution (IBS), which
required that prospects buy a new iSeries computer if they didn't
already own one. While iSeries computers are known for reliability,
scalability, and security, some banks had other reasons for wanting to
use non-IBM hardware. Many had already invested in other kinds of
systems and were rich with object-oriented skill sets.
Nelson Porrora, head of marketing for the Miami company, says, "If a
bank bought a new system a year ago that is not an iSeries, it isn't
going to throw its hardware away. Also, if the people involved in the
selection process know Unix, that's the way they'll want to go."
Porrora says Datapro's main focus is still the iSeries. "It's been our
bread and butter," he says, adding that IBM and GBM (IBM's large
Central American distributor) could possibly have done a better job of
marketing their hardware in Central America and elsewhere in Latin
American. "Some countries prefer other systems," he says.
In 22 years, Datapro, which has 60 employees, has seen its share of
shifts in demand. Despite trends, capricious or otherwise, Datapro
achieved the best market penetration of any banking software vender
that served Latin America, with 110 AS/400 and iSeries clients in 26
countries using IBS. By converting IBS's RPG source to Java, the
company reasoned, it could run on Sun Microsystems Solaris, IBM
OS/400, and Microsoft Windows, and it could give banks what they
wanted.
There are many ways to reshape RPG programs to produce a different end
product, including a hand rewrite. But Datapro executives felt that
IBS, with several million lines of code, could not be converted
manually. According to the company's vice president, Richard Montero,
rewriting this application was simply not an option. "It would have
been too labor-intensive, and the time to market was simply
unacceptable, given our customer commitments," Montero says.
In his quest to find the most expeditious way to create the new
executables, Orestes Garcia, lead developer for IBS, explored his
options. A couple years earlier, the application's front-end was made
browser-accessible using JavaServer Pages, so with that done, he
focused on converting the RPG business logic.
Garcia first explored the possibility of using consultants to convert
the RPG to Java, but since some of Datapro's customers were running
customized versions of IBS, the custom code would have to be
converted, too. Furthermore, he intended to continue developing new
versions of IBS in RPG, so he needed control over the conversion
process.
Garcia decided that a tool to generate Java output, versus one with a
proprietary fourth-generation language, was best. Upon searching the
Web, he found Advanced Systems Concepts and ordered a copy of its
RPG-to-Java conversion software, called RIO, to test. Garcia's
decision followed quickly. "We sent them a couple programs, they did a
conversion, we analyzed the resulting code, and then we made our
decision," he says. "RIO gave us the tool to do it ourselves."
ASC's RIO converts RPG into C++ programs or Java classes. It preserves
RPG business logic and translates it into Java and C++ programs. The
finished product can be deployed on iSeries and other platforms. No
development tools are required to maintain RIO's Java output, which is
easily identifiable. RIO also includes Java and C++ templates to mimic
functions that exist in RPG, but which are not provided in either Java
or C++.
DataPro installed RIO in December 2003 and began its conversion in
January 2004. While RIO can be used in conjunction with IBM's
WebFacing Tool to produce browser-based user interfaces, this step
wasn't necessary, Garcia says. "We didn't have to change the
presentation layer at all," he says.
Garcia breaks the conversion down into a couple of steps. "First, you
define the type of program you want, convert the program, import it in
a Java ID, correct a few things that the conversion process doesn't
do, and that's it," he says. "RIO converts 94 to 95 percent of the
code for us. We have a few CL programs that we have to find another
solution for, but 95 percent is great."
Besides the conversion, Garcia said, he is doing several other things
at the same time. Because Datapro's intention is to produce a product
that will run on other hardware with an Oracle database, he is
normalizing the existing database. Also, new functionality that is
being added to IBS must also be completed before the conversion.
One thing for which Garcia had to develop a different solution was
communication between the business logic and the existing Java user
interface. "We had the sockets communication framework that we use to
communicate between the Java presentation layer and the business
logic," he says. "We redid that in Java in the same protocol. We just
converted the logic and replaced the socket server API with the new
one that we wrote in Java, and that was it."
The projected date of completion for the multiplatform release of IBS
is March of 2005. "We will be able to hit that target," Garcia says.
The progress made so far with RIO has given Datapro the confidence to
sell the Java version now, with a promise of delivery next year.
ASC's software will also play an instrumental role in Datapro's
conversion services. Garcia notes that RIO allows Datapro technicians
to convert custom RPG programs to Java while working at customer
sites. "This will be important in the future," he said.
Although Datapro has competition in the Latin American and Caribbean
market, the company plans to maintain a dominant market position by
continuing to serve their customers in Spanish or English, delivering
the fastest implementation cycle of any vendor, and appealing to a
broader audience with applications that run on OS/400, Windows, and
Sun Solaris.