Mobile computing and the IBM i

ASNA Mobile RPG® Whitepaper

By Roger Pence

ASNA Product Evangelist

© 2013 by ASNA. All rights reserved.

The leaders in IBM i modernization

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With phones and tablets becoming a platform for the

delivery of applications and information, and not

simply a communications tool, the era of running ap-

plications solely on desktop and notebook PCs is rap-

idly being superseded by a fast-moving, diverse era of

ecosystems that span consumer electronics, business

computing, fixed-location clients and mobile clients.

- Nathan Eddy, Gartner, Inc 1

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I t ‘s no secret that mobile computing is hot, hot, hot. But, for you non-believers,

consider these numbers:

Figure 1a. Smartphones outsell PCs in 2011 for the first time. 2

Figure 1b. It’s predicted that by 2014 there will be 2 billion Android devices in use. It’s also predicted

that by 2014 there will be 2 billion PCs in use—that means that Android devices did in six years

what it took PCs 32 years to do! 3

Mobile computing is rapidly maturing into a solid platform for delivering

enterprise applications. This ASNA whitepaper takes a look at mobile com-

puting for the IBM i. It discusses the different ways mobile applications

may be used within the enterprise and how ASNA products solves the chal-

lenges mobile presents.

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Figure 1c. Apple sold 145m iPhones in four years; it took 28 years to sell 122m Macs.4

As these numbers indicate, mobile is irreversibly and irrefutably here to stay.

Many years ago, pundits told us that Unix/Linux would replace the desktop—

but it never did. At least until we could put it in our pocket. With mobile clearly

here to stay, let’s also be realistic about the future of the desktop—especially

in the business world. Mobile devices (especially tablets) may indeed replace a

substantial percentage of consumer desktop computers, but in the enterprise

there is a still a lot of work we need PCs to do. Despite the recognition that

desktop PCs won’t be disappearing off of enterprise desks anytime soon, it is

important for IBM i businesses to acknowledge and consider the growing im-

portance of mobile devices in the enterprise.

Getting off of the dime

It’s no secret that decisions in the IBM i midrange enterprise move slowly. In

fact, I know of a few IBM i decision makers who drive to work in cars adorned

with “They can have my 5250 Model 11 when they pry it from my cold, dead

fingers” bumper stickers.

Despite a general reluctance to embrace new things, from my recent conversa-

tions with hundreds of customers (literally), mobile computing is indeed hot in

the IBM i arena. And not only is it hot, but the demand for it is becoming more

focused. At the last two ASNA developer conferences (in the fall of 2011 and

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spring of 2012) attendees all agreed that they needed mobile apps, but they

couldn’t articulate exactly what the business case was for mobile yet—they on-

ly knew they were being asked about mobile computing—and the need was

coming from the top tier of the organizational chart.

Fast forward to late this summer and this fall where I’ve been on the road do-

ing Web and mobile development workshops for customers and prospects. I’ve

noticed a substantial sharpness when attendees address their need for mobile

computing. Example applications and use cases roll off the tips of their tongues

without much thought. There have clearly been many mobile discussions in the

last six months in these customers’ and prospects’ meeting rooms.

If you’re dragging your feet on mobile, give the Google Mobile Playbook5 a

look. Using plain language, it compelling explains what mobile computing can

do for business (the cynical side of me, thinks that for Google to tell us that is

like your dentist insisting that cotton candy is good for your teeth!).

It’s not just emotional this time

Many of us are veterans from the great GUI wars of the early 90s. Remember

those days? Visual Basic was but a baby. The green screen was frustrating us

then (nearly a quarter a century ago!) and perceived as old-fashioned. We all

got GUI fever. ISV’s could quickly prove the ROI for eliminating the green

screen; but for most vertical application development the GUI had an elusive

ROI metric. It was hard to measure the business value of dropdown menus and

radio buttons over green screens. But, we couldn’t help it, we needed that GUI.

Had to have the GUI. For many years, IBM talked up the importance of, among

others, C, SmallTalk, Visual Age for RPG, OS/2 and the “polymorphic GUI,” Java

(remember the ad in NEWS/400 that implied if we RPG programmers didn’t

learn Java we’d all be flipping hamburgers!), WebFacing, and HATs as avenues

with which we could cure our GUI fever. Alas, virtually everyone one of those

strategies du jour in the IBM midrange community was stopgap at best, and if

not that, an outright failure.

The third-party was there as well. Here at ASNA we sold many copies of our

first ASNA Visual RPG (AVR) product; that product focused nearly exclusively on

fat Windows front-end client development for what we used to call the AS/400.

Visual RPG’s early successes proved that, at least in the heyday of the mid 90s,

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“While [mobile use] is

only 4% of enterprise traffic

now, it will be more than

21% of business traffic in 2013” —Jim Haughwout , SVP of Engineering & Operations at CustomMade

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not every technology needed solid proof of an ROI before its adoption. One of

the lessons we learned back then is that rarely is an enterprise technical deci-

sion driven purely by technical factors. There are also many social, political, and

emotional factors at play. Back in those days, it was often developers, excited

about playing with new shiny things, which helped feed the need for a GUI.

The mobile push

Fast forward to the debt-ridden, employee-reduced, scratching-for-business

early 21st century. Technical projects are on hold or being doled out slowly. Eve-

ry project is scrutinized for ROI and a definitive reason to exist. And fewer de-

velopers are available to work on whatever projects do get the green light.

But then along comes mobile computing. Mobile applications in the enterprise

aren’t about the nebulous payback of drop down menus or radio buttons. Nor

are they about replacing the green screen. They are about empowering a work

force in innovating, cost-saving, business-changing ways. Mobile applications

present the biggest technical advance we’ve seen for a long while in the enter-

prise. These devices defy existing work flows, existing computing models, and

existing expectations. It’s not overly dramatic to say that mobile computing

changes everything. It does.

Having been cable-bound for so long to work with our IBM i workstations, the

vistas that open up when you consider mobile computing are nearly endless.

Supervisors can walk and manage shop floors effortlessly using iPads as 5250

devices; the mobile sales force has information at its fingertips; retail business-

es are now able to move the cash register out to where the customer is (I

bought produce from a farmers market in the middle of a field the other day

and the vendor’s iPhone was his cash register); and dispatchers have instant

access to fleet locations and work progress. And these are the obvious things.

Clever, business-defining uses of mobile devices in the enterprise are being cre-

ated every day.

Unlike previous technical revolutions, the mobile revolution is unique in that

it’s generally driven by a BYOD (bring-your-own-device) mindset. That is, for the

first time ever, end-users are bringing their own devices to you and saying,

“Hook me up, please.” In the old days, we took apps to them and said, “Look

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er what I have for you now.” Today users show us their personal smartphones and

say, “When can I run your app on this? That’s where I really need it.” When PCs

first appeared, their use in the enterprise was championed from the bottom up

by a rogue band of geeky rebels; today the use of mobile computing devices in

the enterprise is being championed from the top down by CEOs and executives.

Back in the day of GUI fever, fulfilling our desire for a great UI didn’t instantly

open the door for new business opportunities, for cost-saving work flows, or

the ability to create dynamically and profitable new business models. Mobile

computing does all that and more. The savvy IBM i decision maker who ignores

mobile computing today is making a huge mistake.

Mobile imposed differences

Despite the pressing need for mobile in the enterprise, it’s important to re-

member that to quench the thirst for mobile means understanding its con-

straints and the differences it imposes on our legacy desktop computing model.

For example:

Mobile devices have a vastly reduced screen size. The common two-

finger “pinch” gesture generally always reduces the size display and you

can use your fingertips to scroll to different parts of the smaller display

into focus. However, to be truly effective, enterprise apps probably

shouldn’t work that way. Enterprise apps will generally make users

more effective if their displays are tailored for the size of the device be-

ing used. This may mean that some apps work better on tablets than on

smartphones. It also may imply that the app is responsive enough to

change itself and dynamically configure itself to provide the best experi-

ence for the mobile device currently being used. Remember, too, that

mobile devices also offer the ability to change their display orientation

between portrait and landscape.

Mobile devices don’t have a mouse or keyboard. Most of the interac-

tion is through touch and gestures. For greenfield apps, built especially

for mobile devices, this is usually an easy constraint to resolve. Howev-

er, the lack of a keyboard (especially a keyboard without function keys)

presents substantial challenges when using an existing IBM i green-

screen application on a tablet.

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er Mobile devices have limited battery life. This isn’t exclusively an enter-

prise issue, all mobile users are quite familiar with the steps required to

keep a mobile device running all day long (why, oh why, are electrical

receptacles such a precious resource at airports!). But it is something we

must consider as we attempt to resolve enterprise challenges with mo-

bile devices. The more “active” an application is (e.g., constantly polling

for a changing GEO-encoded location) the more quickly it sucks life from

the mobile device. For many of us, programming for mobile will remind

us of every-byte-counts programming style we used for the S/36!

Mobile devices are highly dependent on network connectivity. Again,

this isn’t unique to enterprise uses of mobile, but it is something we

need to consider. Mobile applications may need to exploit local storage

on mobile devices and they may need to be more gracious about broken

connectivity to be good mobile citizens.

Native or not?

In addition to the previously mentioned mobile-imposed differences, the model

of the mobile application should be considered. The two prevailing models are

native and HTML/JavaScript/CSS (which is condensed to just HTML for most of

this article).

For native applications, Java is the language generally used for the Android and

Apple’s Objective C is the language generally used for the iPhone/iPad. Both of

these languages (especially Objective C—it doesn’t even have implicit garbage

collection in the mobile runtime!), have substantial learning curves. And the

integrated development environments they also offer their own steep learning

curves.

For most enterprise applications, the costs to create device-specific applica-

tions are generally beyond the budgets of most businesses. It takes a very large

customer base to make most native efforts affordable—Angry Birds amortizes

high development costs over millions of users. It is true that going native poten-

tially offers a little closer affinity to the hardware (e.g., access to the accelerom-

eter, the gyro, the camera, and touch screen), but the HTML model has rapidly

matured on the most widely used mobile platforms to recognize hardware

APIs. For example, the accelerometer and gyroscope are available to JavaScript

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“When RPG programmers

learn [mobile] technologies,

they become a more

valuable commodity.” — Dan Burger, IT Jungle

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er on both Android and Apple mobile devices. Touch and many other facilities are

also easily available to JavaScript.

Beyond hardware access, the HTML model provides a very strong user experi-

ence on mobile devices. One of the things we’ve learned at ASNA with mobile

applications is that they are held to a pretty high “do they look and feel right”

standard by users. Savvy mobile users can spot a bogus, off-by-one mobile UI in

a heartbeat—so a high affinity for what looks and feels right is very important.

And that look and feel can be achieved by the HTML model.

Taxonomy of mobile computing for the IBM i enterprise

Having discounted native development for mobile applications in the IBM i en-

terprise, let’s classify mobile computing for the IBM i. To do so, we need to be

specific about where and how mobile will be used, what devices are being used,

and what software is needed. At ASNA, we’ve defined three specific areas of

mobile computing and the problems they solve.

The first area of mobile IBM i mobile computing is the use of existing IBM i soft-

ware on mobile devices.

There are many environments, represented notably by manufacturing and

health care, where users need instant, mobile access to existing IBM i 24x80 or

27x132 applications. These aren’t “mobile” applications, mind you; these are

simply existing applications that need to be used on mobile devices. The appli-

cations are tested, deployed and connected to substantial back-end workflows

and server devices. The business problem they represent is that someone needs

to use them from any physical access point. In some ways, this model may be

considered less “mobile computing” and more like offering “mobile work-

stations.” Call it what you want, it’s a critical need for many IBM i shops.

In most cases for this model tablets are the mobile device of choice. Assuming a

superb emulator or enhanced display file is available, tablets provide the form

factor required to render existing green-screen applications in a rational, usable

manner without modification or other preparation. Do note that the quality of

the emulator or enhanced display is critical to providing a great user experience

on a table. ASNA’s browser-based emulator and its Wings product are both op-

timized for use with Apple or Android devices—especially tablets.

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er The two screens below show how an unmodified greens-screen looks using

ASNA’s browser-based emulator in an iPad. We took great care to make our

emulator’s “keyboard” feel natural and effortless for users. Function keys must

be available, but users don’t want them in the way. Figure 2a shows the ASNA

emulator in action on an iPad. Figure 2b shows an ASNA Wings enhanced dis-

played file in action on an iPad. This display reacts naturally to touch, and while

it doesn’t look like it was written from scratch for the iPad, provides a very

good user experience. The Wings mobile user experience is also high-value in

that it is very economical to produce and use.

ASNA Wings uses IBM’s Open Access API, so the underlying RPG that is driving

the enhanced Wings displays is essentially unaware that its user interface has

been so dramatically enhanced. ASNA Wings provides a seamless way for you

to present your existing IBM i applications with very little effort. In fact, alt-

hough Wing’s primary reason for being is to let you create enhanced displays

(like the one shown in Figure 2b), with the ASNA emulator (which is included

with Wings) it also provides a great no-effort mobile-enabler if all that your us-

ers need is a superb tablet-friend emulator.

Figure 2a. A 5250 green screen running in the ASNA emulator on an iPad.

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Figure 2b. A Wings-enhanced display file displayed by an ILE RPG program on an iPad.

The second and third areas of IBM i mobile computing

The first area of mobile computing focuses on using existing IBM i applications

with mobile applications. Because of their form factor (which enables tablets to

display existing applications well without modifying the display file), tablets are

generally going to resolve challenges in the first area of mobile computing. The

second and third areas of IBM i mobile computing are similar in that both of

them address the need to create new IBM i mobile applications. These applica-

tions will work with either tables or smartphones—but anecdotal customer in-

terviews indicate that smartphones are the much bigger target for these new

applications.

The result of the second and third areas of mobile computing, at least from the

end user perspective, is very similar, if not identical looking for the end-user.

The end-user has a mobile application, tailored for mobile use, with the appro-

priate look and feel. However the two areas diverge substantially in how the

new mobile applications are created. Before we discuss these two areas in de-

tail, let’s first examine why you might want to write new applications at all for

mobile—after all, you have tons of applications on your IBM i—under what

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“It’s not your system that’s old, it’s your tools.”

—Susan Gantner, IBM i champion, educator, and author8

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er circumstances would you ever need more of them? Aren’t IBM i applications

like Paul McCartney songs? Do we really need any more of them?

Many (most?) legacy applications are monolithic beasts with nearly every ele-

ment of the 24x80 screen filled with data. These applications were designed for

a back-office, start-em-and-stay-in-em work flow. These legacy applications

were also written at a time when performance was taken for granted. We did-

n’t spend much time worrying about network throughput when the network

was nothing but a 60’ twinax cable. The legacy apps opened many (many, many

in most cases) files and flowed tons of data between the IBM i’s DASD and the

5250 devices.

Mobile applications are the polar opposite of their slothful, monolithic legacy

forebears. Where our legacy IBM i applications included everything but the

kitchen sink, mobile applications are focused like a laser on delivering very spe-

cific chunks of information for very specific tasks. Great care is taken to deliver

just the data needed to fulfill a very focused (and small!) display. Performance

isn’t taken for granted—mobile apps are written to pessimistically assume the

data pipeline is slow. The focus, scope, performance, and specificity required

to fulfill the demands of mobile computing usually precludes using existing ap-

plications for specific mobile tasks.

Beyond the dramatic application model difference, another thing that makes us

need new applications for mobile devices is the fact that in many cases mobile

computing resolves challenges that green screen applications never faced. Mo-

bile computing often steps up to fulfill business needs that used to be resolved

manually and with batch processing. For example, it was impossible for mobile

employees (e.g., truck drivers out on a day long delivery route) to use 5250 de-

vices to punch in and out for lunch. Therefore, analog work flows were created

for these tasks in the old days. With the right software in place, mobile steps up

to gracefully resolve these old antiquated analog work flows.

The reality is, for most IBM i businesses needing mobile applications today, un-

like Paul McCartney songs that we just don’t need any more of, we are proba-

bly going to need a new family of IBM i applications targeted specifically for

mobile users. Having established that we probably need some new applications

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to fulfill our mobile demands for the IBM i, how do we get them? That brings us

to the definition of the second and third areas of mobile computing for the IBM

i. Remember that as far as the end user is concerned, assuming well-crafted de-

velopment tools are used, the result of these two areas is for all intents and pur-

poses indistinguishable. Under the covers, though, two very distinct program-

ming paths are taken to arrive at the result.

The second area of mobile IBM i mobile computing is the creation of new soft-

ware for mobile use with traditional RPG III or IV programming experience.

Although we’ve heard a lot lately about the demise of the RPG programmer, and

it is true that some are rapidly reaching retirement age, there are still thousands

of RPG programmers with great programming skills in IBM i shops today. Given

the right mobile-enabled tools, these programmers could easily develop the next

generation of mobile applications for the IBM i. The key, though, is “given the

right mobile-enabled tools.”

These RPG coders need a programming model that bridges their traditional RPG

programming expertise with the ability to create, and connect to, a great mobile

user experience. In Q1 2013, ASNA will release ASNA Mobile RPG (MR) to solve

this challenge. MR empowers RPG programmers to create superb mobile appli-

cations. The displays in Figures 3a, 3b and 3c show an example of the type of

mobile user experience you can expect with Mobile RPG. You can read more

about ASNA Mobile RPG at http://asna.com/us/mobilerpg.

MR provides a Windows-based designer used to create mobile displays with a

point-and-click model. Once created, the MR Mobile Display File is compiled on

the IBM i as a display file object. An RPG programmer then writes an RPG pro-

gram using this display file. At runtime the RPG program thinks it is communi-

cating with the traditional display file, when in fact it is communicating with the

MR Mobile Display File—which is displaying on a smartphone or tablet.

MR was specifically designed to put mobile development in the hands of tradi-

tional RPG programmers who do don’t know, or have the time to learn, HTML,

JavaScript, CSS3, Java, or Objective C. The MR Mobile Display File designer hides

away those details and simply lets an RPG programmer be productive quickly

with their existing skills.

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er In 1994 ASNA introduced ASNA Visual RPG and that product revolutionized IBM

i application development for thousands of customers around the world. ASNA

Mobile RPG will do the same thing for IBM i mobile application development

for the traditional RPG programmer! Stay tuned!

Figure 3a. A mobile application driven by either ASNA Mobile RPG or by ASNA Visual RPG. This screen lets a

user select the first letter of a customer’s name.

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Figure 3b. After tapping a letter on the screen shown in Figure 3a, the user can scroll down the necessary

customer—or the customer can be searched the search box at the top of the list.

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Figure 3c. After tapping the correct customer on the screen in Figure 3b, this screen is displayed to show

customer sales detail.

The third area of mobile IBM i mobile computing is the creation of new soft-

ware for mobile use by PC-centric developers.

Just as many IBM i businesses have traditional RPG programmers available

to create mobile applications (again, given effective tools!), there are also a

great number of IBM i businesses who have VB, C# or ASNA Visual RPG pro-

grammers who also want to create great IBM i applications.

While there are many approaches to building this type of application with

these languages, a very popular model has emerged called a “single page”

application where the HTML, the JavaScript, and the CSS are delivered to

the mobile device with one payload. A single page app is created with two

primary components: a server-side component that provides data to the

mobile presentation layer and an HTML5 presentation layer. The data is

provided with Web services serving up JSON9 data to the mobile client (and

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“Things are changing

quickly and embracing mobile

technology may well be a

make-or-break point for

many IBM i shops.” —Jon Paris, “Mobile Is… Different”, November 28, 2012

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conversely, receiving it back from the mobile client).

Because ASNA Visual RPG has such a great affinity for the IBM i database, it

makes a great language with which to write these JSON-providing services.

These programs are hosted on a Windows Web server and read IBM i data

and translate it to and from JSON for consumption by the HTML5 presenta-

tion layer.

There are a great many open source libraries (such as jQuery11, jQuery Mo-

bile12, Dojo13, and Knockout.js14) that facilitate the creation of the mobile

user interface. ASNA Visual RPG works very well with single page mobile

apps and with these open source libraries. In the case of having VB or C#

programmers, they can use ASNA Visual RPG to focus on the data services,

and then scaffold the rest of the application with the language of their

choice for the rest of the back-end.

Creating mobile applications like this generally requires a team atmos-

phere—there are, to be clear, several critical skills required to stitch this

type of application together. But there are many IBM i programming team

members who either already have many of these skills or are ready and

willing to learn them. If your team has programmers like this, the third area

of mobile is a great way to fulfill your IBM i mobile needs.

The mobile challenge awaits!

The ability to create great mobile applications for the IBM i presents many

very exciting opportunities. These applications have the potential to be a

generation of business-changing, workflow-defining applications. They will

keep your business competitive, relevant, and vibrant. And for many shops,

resolving the mobile challenge will revitalize its programmers with new and

exciting applications to create.

As you can see, there are several great ways to use mobile computing with

your IBM i. Regardless of how you need implement mobile computing on

your IBM i, ASNA is there to help!

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Endnotes

1. http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Mobile-Device-Usage-Rising-App-Developers-Should-Prepare-Gartner-133686/

2. http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/smartphone-sales-exceed-those-of-pcs-for-first-time-apple-smashes-record/

3. http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/27/3121029/google-400-million-android-devices-sold

4. http://www.valuewalk.com/2012/02/iphone-vs-mac-watch-who-wins-chart/ http://www.popsci.com/gadgets/article/2012-09/18-facts-about-iphone-5

5. http://www.themobileplaybook.com/en-us/#/chapter5

6. http://www.exsecutus.com/haughwout/2010/02/thinking-about-mobile-for-your-enterprise-you-better-be-you-only-have-three-years

7. http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh032612-printer02.html

8. http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh050712-printer01.html

9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON

10. http://ibmsystemsmag.blogs.com/idevelop/mobile/

11. jquery.com

12. jquerymobile.com

13. dojotoolkit.org

14. knockoutjs.com

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