Synon To Add Java To AS/400

Web to be used as interface for apps

By Rich Levin

ynon Corp. will announce this week a thin-client feature for its Synon/2E AS/400 development tool at Common, the AS/400 user conference in San Antonio.

With the feature, AS/400 developers can use the World Wide Web as a user-interface tier. In addition, the product supports RPG and Cobol screens. Application presentation layers developed with the upcoming 6.0 upgrade of Synon/2E can be deployed as Java. The object-based Web interfaces run on a Windows NT-based Web server.

The technology, licensed from CST Technologies Inc. and integrated into Synon/2E, reads object models stored in the Synon repository and rolls out what officials from both companies claim is 100% Pure Java JDK 1.1 object source code.

"The Synon/2E developer now has a new generation option, which generates 100% Java code as the presentation layer," says Gideon Hollander, chief technology officer at CST, in Atlanta. "The application layer is untouched-it's the original RPG or Cobol code. At run time, the Java user interface downloads from the Web server to the browser, and re-represents what were green screens as feature-rich graphical interfaces."

Treating Java as a pure application user-interface target represents new thinking among vendors. "We're not encouraging our customers to program in Java," says Alan Zwiren, Synon's director of global IBM relations. "We see Java as a platform target." Gartner Group Inc., an IT advisory firm in Stamford, Conn., estimates that Synon, a $77 million privately held company, has 30,000 Synon/2E deployments worldwide.

While the initial release requires a Windows NT Web se rver, native AS/400 support is promised for a future release.

Synon/2E 6.0 will be available on Oct. 1. Tiered pricing starts at $30,000, and tops out at $105,000. Deployment run times cost $200 to $500 per user.

Back to News in Review

Send Us Your Feedback

Top of the Page