Johannesburg, 22 Apr 2003
LANSA continues its transformation into a multiplatform development tool with the announcement of version 10.0.
Now, for the first time, LANSA supports Red Hat Linux and Sun Solaris operating systems, in addition to IBM AIX and HP-UX. LANSA has also expanded its existing support for Microsoft Windows.
"It is worthy to note which new technologies LANSA has chosen to incorporate into its software. This is because LANSA`s livelihood and longevity, as a 4GL tools provider, is tied more closely to the satisfaction of its customers than most other types of software companies," explained TCM marketing executive Jorge De Campos.
"LANSA`s customers have invested thousands of rands and man-hours in learning LANSA as an insurance policy of sorts against the changing seas of technology, platforms and programming languages," he added.
"When LANSA builds support for a new technology into its 4GL environment, it gives LANSA users an advantage on incorporating that technology into their applications, compared with other suppliers that must build that support themselves from scratch. That is the value proposition of 4GLs in general, and LANSA has been more successful at it than any other 4GL vendor on the OS/400 platform," noted de Campos.
De Campos said LANSA as a company is continually evaluating what direction it should take to keep its technology the most viable and to attract new users and independent software vendors. For the past few years, LANSA has had a two-pronged strategy:
* First, to continue building support for operating systems besides OS/400. * Second, to continue its transformation from a strictly programming tools vendor into a vendor of practical applications with a great set of accompanying development tools.
De Campos said LANSA 10.0 provides rapid integration of different systems and the capability to augment emerging technologies with existing applications. " LANSA Version 10.0 includes significant enhancements, functionality and support that will assist customers in taking advantage of leading-edge solutions capable of deployment across multiple platforms," he said.
With the 10.0 release, LANSA has expanded the platforms supported for the Web server tier of LANSA for the Web, the company`s environment for development of Web and wireless applications. With 10.0, LANSA adds Red Hat Linux and Sun Microsystems Solaris as supported platforms for the Web server tier. The entire list of supported Web servers now includes Red Hat Linux 7.1 Professional Server running Apache or Tomcat, Sun Solaris 7, Hewlett-Packard`s HP-UX 11.0, or IBM`s AIX 4.3.3 running Apache or Tomcat, OS/400 running WebSphere, Apache, or Tomcat, and Windows running IIS.
LANSA for the Web 10.0 now supports multiple instances of the Visual LANSA runtime environment, allowing users to, for example, have one LANSA 9.1 application running concurrently with one or more 10.0 applications on the same server.
LANSA has also built a new interface for its e-Business Frameworks, a set of components that ship with LANSA for the Web, and includes pre-built programs such as Order Transaction and Extended Search. LANSA says the new e-Business Framework Wizard interface includes features such as simplified layouts, better control of layout definitions, and support for DHTML menus and Cascading Style Sheets.
Users can now deploy their LANSA Integrator application on Windows servers with the 10.0 release. LANSA Integrator, announced in 2001, uses XML and Java Services technologies to allow companies to send and receive messages to and from a variety of platforms. This release also has EDI support, including support for EDI X12 and EDIFACT.
Visual LANSA, the company`s premiere client-server development environment for OS/400, Unix, Red Hat Linux and Windows, has also been enhanced with this release. First, the Visual LANSA Framework now provides an object authority system that can be used to prevent users from accessing the framework, server, applications, or LANSA business objects. The Visual Modeler component of Visual LANSA now supports drag-and-drop capabilities for creating entities and building relationships between entities.
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