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

["jt" <jt@xxxxxx>]

Buck,

Good comments...  I "HEAR" ya...!

jt

| -----Original Message-----
| From: midrange-l-admin@midrange.com
| [mailto:midrange-l-admin@midrange.com]On Behalf Of Buck Calabro
| Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2001 10:10 AM
| To: midrange-l@midrange.com
| Subject: iSeries applications coupled with Microsoft applications (was:
| US Navy bets on Win2K)
| Importance: High
|
|
| 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
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