ASNA Wings takes your RPG programs from green-screen to great

ASNA WingsRPG is the fastest, easiest way to provide a browser UI for your RPG applications. Beyond performing stand-alone application modernization, WingsRPG can also be great first-step into a staged IBM i RPG application migration with ASNA Monarch.

ASNA Wings borrows the display file import component from ASNA Monarch to create browser-based versions of your green-screen display files. Wings works through the IBM i's Rational Open Access to transparently redirect RPG's the display file data stream to Wings browser-based displays. This all happens without any invasive changes to RPG programming logic.

With Wings, you just roll up your sleeves and start importing display files. You can get results in a day with ASNA Wings. Should you later decide to do a full Monarch migration, the display file work you've done with Wings is upwardly compatible with ASNA Monarch.

Wings provides a "Wings Design Aid" which is Visual Studio snap-in. Despite living inside Visual Studio, no code is needed to use ASNA Wings. The Wings Design Aid reads display files and translates them to HTML 5 files. The Design Aid produces a C# Web application that is deployed to a Windows Web server—the imported display files reside in this project.

Wings uses IBM's Open Access API

The IBM Open Access API provides a transparent way for RPG programs to redirect file data on input and output. For ASNA WingsRPG, the Open Access API redirects display file data to and from an HTML 5 browser-based user interface. The Open Access API ships as a Licensed Program Product with IBM i.

ASNA WingsRPG uses the IBM i Open Access api

Traditionally, as shown here, the IBM i routes display file through the workstation control and passes it on to a 5250 device.

Display file data flow with ASNA WingsRPG

The IBM i Open Access API allows WingsRPG to route display file data through an RPG program to an HTML 5 browser user interface. Open Access is a core part of the IBM i operating system.

Wings pages can be customized

Wings produces its pages using ASP.NET's Razor pages. The cosmetics of these pages can be customized with CSS. For example:

Original green-screen

The original 5250 green-screen interface. Wings imports dislay file formats directly from the DSS source.

Wings base output

Wings creates an HTML 5 Web page that provided a browser-based equivalent of the original 5250 green-screen UI. All standard input rules and behaviors persist. Your corporate colors and logo go into a template and are repeated for each page.

Wings with minimal CSS

Wings screens are customizable in many ways. Making simple CSS tweaks are the most common enhancement and offer lots of value for the effort. Here, CSS has been used to more effectively bring the important parts of the page to users' attention.

Using minimal CSS you can:

• Change page's colors and logos to match your corporate branding
• Move things around on page for more white space and clarity
• Change fonts and heading attributes (ie, bold and italics)

With C# or Encore RPG knowledge, Wings pages can be more substantially customized to include images, make Web service calls, or display data from alternative data sources.

Wings includes a browser-based 5250 emulator

ASNA Wings makes the browser your users' entry point into your IBM i RPG application. A single URL gets them into the app (after signing in).

Displays that you've modernized with Wings are shown with the modernization in effect. Non-modernized displays are passed off transparently to Wing's built-in 5250 browser-based emulator.

ASNA Wings 5250 emulator with default color scheme

The original 5250 green-screen interface. This page has not been modernized with Wings. Selecting a customer number here leads the user to a Wings-modernized display. Click right arrow to see it.

Modernized customer details screen

Modernized screens and green-screens displayed naturally and without friction with the Wings 5250 browser-based emulator.

The Wings emulator makes it easy to modernize selected parts of your application easily. Wings lets you modernize your application incrementally without any deep analytical work. Non-modernized displays are passed off transparently to Wing's built-in 5250 browser-based emulator.